Zurich brings employee-screening tool WebMVR to auto dealer customers

Adding another valuable tool to its robust offerings for auto dealer customers, Zurich North America’s Direct Markets team has collaborated with SambaSafety to provide dealers access to WebMVR. This cutting-edge, digital portal delivers real-time, detailed insights drawn from motor vehicle records (MVRs) of prospective employees to help ensure employers hire only qualified, lower-risk drivers with a safe driving history.

MVRs are vital for dealers in making these informed hiring decisions, which can help shield them from significant liability exposures. WebMVR directly integrates with each state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to retrieve pertinent data.

A huge boost to hiring efficiency, WebMVR is offered as a free additional service to Zurich’s dealer customers. Zurich has always provided MVRs to dealers, but the sheer volume of requests could sometimes cause delays in getting the needed driving history of applicants. In a fast-moving business, this was a hurdle. 

Sheryl Gilbert, Direct Markets Property & Casualty Customer Services Manager for Zurich North America, summed up the problem and how WebMVR solves it:

“The biggest pain points have been the turnaround time and consistency of the results,” Gilbert said. “Now, with WebMVR, our customers can directly access instant results, and the automation ensures the accuracy of the information. This saves a lot of time and headaches for both our dealer customers and our team members.”

SambaSafety, a leading provider of cloud-based mobility risk management solutions, was brought to the attention of Direct Markets by Zurich colleagues in Risk Engineering, including Senior Health & Safety Risk Engineering Consultant Yvonne Miller. SambaSafety had been a vendor partner recommended for some U.S. National Accounts customers with large vehicle fleets.

“Given the similarities to our customers in Direct Markets, we were eager to learn more about their offering and how it could simplify our processes and improve our customers’ experiences,” said Zurich’s Paul Klemanski, who worked as a Direct Markets Underwriter before recently moving to Group Captives.

“The competition among auto dealers is greater than ever,” added Klemanski. “Our dealers are constantly looking for ways to attract and retain talent. By helping them improve the speed by which they make good hiring decisions, we’re helping our customers succeed.”

Gilbert said bringing WebMVR to dealer customers also allows the Direct Markets team to improve efficiencies on its end. “We’ll be able to redeploy resources in Direct Markets to other important work such as certificates and ID cards,” she explained.

WebMVR was given a soft launch in a pilot program that yielded extremely positive feedback from the participating customers. As it rolls out more widely to other dealer customers, Direct Markets is also exploring how WebMVR could help meet the needs of auto rental customers in the near future.

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