South Carolina House Bill 4847, called the Province Support Act, focuses on ensuring consumer choice and safety with regards to collision repairs.
The act would amend current law to include several new requirements, but four are highly relevant to the collision repair industry. These are the dependence on insurers to supply a third-party appraisal, to allow policyholders to choose where they take their vehicles for repairs and what car rental company they will use, preventing collusion between insurers and vendors and requiring repairers to follow along with OEM repair procedures.
The bill is sponsored by Democrats Joseph H. Jefferson, Jr. , Lonnie Hosey , Annie E. McDaniel , Wendell G. Gilliard and Bill Clyburn . Only McDaniel responded to Repairer Driven News’ request for comment on the balance by the publishing deadline.
A similar bill concerning the appraisal clause has additionally been introduced within the Washington House and Oregon already has a law around the issue in position.
McDaniel said her district is mainly rural so she signed on like a co-sponsor from the bill because she believes it'll have an optimistic impact on smaller businesses in rural communities.
“Most of the insurance companies have agreements with a lot of the franchises, larger repair companies and automotive repair centers and lots of our small rural shops are left out,” she said.
Insurers would be necessary to use South Carolina-owned vendors for at least 50% of their covered services.
Using third-party appraisals to establish the actual cash worth of vehicles won’t leave any room for negotiation on how much insurers pays out and can prevent insurers from getting money back for claims, based on McDaniel.
“If that’s happening, I’m totally against that because once that claim is filed and also the insurance company claims what it really pays – as well as in this example it might be according to appraised value – then there should not be any room to allow them to get any other money because of that claim,” she said.
The act would also prohibit collusion between insurers and vendors to make policyholders to go to certain shops or car rental companies or for insurers and companies to have pre-negotiated price agreements that must definitely be met for any shop to do claims repair work for that insurer.
Carolina’s Collision Association President Kyle Bradshaw told RDN the association supports the bill which it’s a win-win for consumers and repairers.
“Right now, there’s no way of disputing exactly what a carrier says with regards to repairs basically if you’ve got insurance in Sc as well as your policy doesn’t have an appraisal provision inside it then whatever your carrier says you can either have to make the decision on I can spend the money for difference or ultimately decide to file litigation upon your insurance,” Bradshaw said. “The appraisal provision provides a dispute mechanism without having to go the litigation route.”
For example, Auto Claim Specialists Managing Director Robert McDorman has data from more than 700 Texas total loss appraisal clause proceedings that demonstrate insurer estimates of customer vehicle value were, typically, around $3,500 lacking.
The CCA also agrees with following OEM procedures.
“We want vehicles repaired properly and we want to put consumers in safe vehicles,” Bradshaw said. “We believe the way in which the OEM says to repair the automobile is the way to fix an automobile. Sometimes [with] carriers that doesn’t necessarily align using what their values are.”
After introduction, the bill was referred to the House Committee on Labor, Commerce and Industry on Jan. 20.
