Experts and coachbuilders against the insurance companies

The insurance adjusters and the Italian body shops intervene against some “incorrect practices implemented by the insurance companies that end up causing damage to Italian motorists and the market” in terms of compensation for accidents and car repairs.

The complaint comes jointly from Aiped (Italian Association of Damage Appraisers) and Federcarrozzieri, which represents the Italian body shops.

“The appraisal activity, in the relationship with the insurance principals, runs into some serious critical issues in terms of the appraisals aimed at allowing an economic quantification of the damage suffered by the cars in the event of accidents. – explains Luigi Mercurio president of Aiped – The Code of private insurance defines the profession of the expert in the insurance field as an activity aimed at ‘ascertaining and estimating damage to property deriving from the circulation, theft and fire of motor vehicles and boats’. then determine and estimate the damage from a technical point of view, identifying the necessary replacements and/or repairs, also evaluating the possible uneconomical nature of such repairs.However, the identification or estimate of the company hourly cost of body shop companies, which constitutes a separate element from the estimate of the damage”.

“Despite these legal provisions, the insurance companies require the experts to carry out assessments relating to the hourly labor costs exposed by the bodyshops and to those of consumables (such as spare parts) which however are not the direct object of the professional activity of the insurance adjuster, since each car repairer, by virtue of entrepreneurial freedom, adopts his own rate for labor within the reference market.This practice leads to underestimating labor costs by an average of 15/20%, those of paint materials by 25%”.