Digital IDs right for R.I.?

GOING MOBILE: Hunter Insurance President Brian Hunter, white shirt, speaks with customer and CertaPro Painters owner Mark Bulpitt. Hunter is hoping that Rhode Island allows policyholders to access auto-insurance information through mobile devices. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
GOING MOBILE: Hunter Insurance President Brian Hunter, white shirt, speaks with customer and CertaPro Painters owner Mark Bulpitt. Hunter is hoping that Rhode Island allows policyholders to access auto-insurance information through mobile devices. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Hunter Insurance President Brian Hunter stays on top of issues in his field, and one that the Cumberland-based agent has paid attention to lately is the ability of drivers in some states to access their car-insurance ID card digitally.
“I’m aware of what’s going on in other states and it would be nice if they allowed it in Rhode Island,” he said.
Getting stopped by a police officer and having forgotten to put a current identification card in the glove compartment can send motorists to court for what Hunter and the Chicago-based Property Casualty Insurers Association of America say ends up wasting everybody’s time unnecessarily.
That could all change by next year, as the association, which wrote the first statutory change for Idaho early in 2012, and has supported the changes in 27 other states, works with Rhode Island state agencies and state Rep. Brian P. Kennedy, D-Hopkinton, to make possible regulatory or statutory adjustments in the Ocean State.
Here, as in other states, the capability would be optional, not mandatory, Kennedy said.
“It’s similar to boarding an airplane with a digital boarding pass,” Kennedy said. “You can do everything imaginable digitally on a smartphone. There are apps for everything. With so many states going this way, it’s one of those issues we should at least be talking about.”
Alex Hageli, director of personal-lines policy for the association, was the author of the Idaho law.
“The fact it passes unanimously should tell you all you need to know,” Hageli said. “I’ve never seen an issue spread this fast.”
In June, association Vice President Frank O’Brien met with Anthony Silva, administrator at R.I. Department of Motor Vehicles, advocating for an administrative change, which is, technically, all that is needed. O’Brien told Providence Business News, however, that he’d be happy also to work with Kennedy, who is chairman of the House Insurance Committee, if Kennedy follows through with plans to draft legislative changes for the January 2014 session. “The bottom line here is, there is an emerging consensus in Rhode Island as there was elsewhere that this is a good thing to do,” O’Brien said: “something that would make people’s lives more convenient. And there are a lot of good reasons to do it. How we get there doesn’t matter.”
Mostly, the change is practical.
“We’re moving more and more toward a paperless society,” O’Brien added. “More and more people have smartphones, and it is becoming increasingly obvious that being able to display a card on a smartphone is both convenient and a savings” in both time and money.
Silva said his office would work with the insurance industry and Kennedy to “rewrite regulations to be more in line with today’s business practices.” He would also get input from law enforcement, he said.
Besides Idaho, the other 27 states that have authorized digital access to car insurance ID cards include: Maine, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska.
Rhode Island ought to be next on that list, Kennedy said, though he is interested in making sure that privacy and identity-theft issues are covered in any legislation he drafts to protect consumers. He has been getting copies of the laws and rules from states that have made regulatory or legislative changes to steep himself in the nuances of the subject.
“Most states doing this are doing it statutorily,” Kennedy said. “The fact of the matter is, it’s the (Rhode Island) Department of Business Regulation that ultimately handles insurance issues, so it almost has to be changes in the insurance laws.” Interactive networks that transmit data digitally can be hacked, of course, and Kennedy wants to ensure that consumers are protected if such a rule or law is put into place.
“There’s always a concern about civil liberties, which is another reason why you don’t want to require it,” he said. “There are some people who will never have a cellphone and need to have that paper option, particularly older individuals. And there are privacy concerns, identity theft. If it’s easy to pull contacts off a smartphone, it’s probably just as easy to pull auto-insurance information off. “The last thing you want,” he said, “is for somebody to digitally steal somebody’s insurance information.”
One of the reasons so many states have allowed digital access to car-insurance ID cards, O’Brien said, is most state legislatures were in session this past year, and a lot of states needed to change their statutes.
Progressive and the Ohio Mutual Insurance Group are two of the companies Hunter said provide mobile apps, or applications, that allow electronic access to car-insurance ID cards.
“Insurers are getting onboard with this as an option,” said O’Brien. “We’d like to be in a position of accommodating our customers. That’s just good business.”
Gary Heaslip, president of Cross Insurance, Inc. in East Providence, said he has mixed feelings about the prospect of digital access. Personally, he’s not so sure he’s ready to give up his paper ID card. Cellphones often are not charged when you need them, or are easily lost, he said.
“I kind of like the idea of [the ID card] sitting in the car,” Heaslip said. •

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