March 10, 2017—This month, National AutoBody Research (NABR) will launch a new version of its popular labor rate survey, specifically tailored to the standardized labor rate survey format defined by the California Department of Insurance (CDI) in their new, recently implemented Auto Body Labor Rate Survey regulations.
NABR's fully compliant survey not only will follow the standardized survey format but also will comply with the other technical and administrative aspects of the regulation, in order to support insurers who prefer to efficiently outsource the survey to a third-party, and to provide collision centers with prevailing rate reports for their geographic area using a compliant survey from an independent source.
To meet some of the regulation's more technical requirements such as geocoding, determination of qualified shops within a "geographic area," and the calculation of a "prevailing rate," NABR will leverage its Variable Rate System (VRS) online software technology, enabling VRS users to generate a compliant prevailing rate report for any body shop and geographic area in California.
"We're pleased to offer this complete survey service to all insurers and collision centers doing business in California," said Sam Valenzuela, President of NABR. "This solution provides exactly what the California collision repair industry needs: one independent, third-party conducting compliant labor rate surveys and providing one source for labor rate information that both insurers and shops can use, so everybody is on the same page."
Importantly, NABR's approach eliminates the redundancy and inefficiency of multiple insurers conducting the same survey to the same body shops, and avoids the inevitable problem of costly and time-consuming reconciliations among separate surveys, as those surveys get different results due to differences in survey response rates or other survey inconsistencies.
NABR's CDI-compliant labor rate survey will be available to all insurers with automotive insurance business in California. For California collision centers, a personalized prevailing rate report for their unique geographic area will be included at no additional charge for VRS subscribers, and available separately for a fee for non-VRS subscribers.
