A “pragmatic national approach” to the management of repairable written-off vehicles has been called for by insurers at a Sydney seminar on vehicle theft.

The workshop was convened by the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council (NMVTRC) and involved state transport agencies, police and the motor trades as well as the insurance industry.

The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) called for greater enforcement of repairer licensing requirements, a tougher road safety inspection regime for vehicles being re-registered and greater community access to government data on the history and status of write-offs.

“Improvement of the current system should not impact the salvage and sale of repairable write-offs when used as spare parts or returned to a roadworthy condition by licensed repairers (before being re-registered), which offsets the cost of individual claims made by policyholders,” ICA said in a statement.

“Importantly, this contributes to lower claims costs for the consumer.”

NMVTRC Executive Director Ray Carroll says up to 40,000 repairable write-offs are re-registered each year, depending on the severity of weather events.

But mechanically sound, hailed-damaged vehicles are not the source of concern. The workshop concluded the problem centres around criminal manipulation of vehicles and problems associated with safe repair.

“What we don’t know, because of the nature of the activities, is just how widespread that problem is,” Mr Carroll told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “The central question is, is this the iceberg or just the tip of the iceberg?”

He says there need to be cost-effective and significant barriers to criminals and unsafe repairers.