Navigate Go Live on 30 April launched a new era for MIB’s data services for insurers, the police and the public.

Replatforming the Motor Insurance Database (MID) to Navigate – our new cloud platform – was the first significant milestone in our programme to provide modern data services to support insurers and help the police make roads safer.

The Motor Insurance Database (MID) had served the insurance industry and our partners for more than 23 years. But it was an ageing platform with stability issues and limited functionality for users. 

Navigate is a modern, scalable, self-serve cloud platform with a unified user portal. A better, long-term solution for users.

Given the scale of the implementation involving many different users and stakeholders, it was likely that we would experience some post Go Live issues.

We’re adopting a ‘fix forward’ approach to the challenges we’ve encountered. We’ve worked closely with customers to prioritise the issues with the greatest impact and we’re grateful for the understanding and patience shown by all our stakeholders.

Serving our stakeholders

Navigate now holds billions of motor insurance data records and, since launch, more than 8.5 million enquiries have been made on that data. It helps support MIB’s ongoing purpose to get uninsured drivers off the UK’s roads.

MIB has worked with key stakeholders, including the Home Office and DVLA, who use Navigate data to enforce the UK’s traffic laws closely up to, and after launch. Police officers have access to Navigate through a secure PNC (Police National Computer) connection at the roadside and the data from Navigate feeds MIDAS.

Navigate Go Live... in numbers

Navigate launch was the largest technical implementation in MIB history and saw:

• 4.1 billion data records – two decades’ worth of data – was safely migrated
• 55,000 MID users transitioned to the Navigate portal
• Every day, 100,000 members of the public check their vehicle is showing in Navigate on the new, free Check Your Vehicle service, which replaces the popular Own Vehicle Lookup (OVL)
• Post-Go Live Sunday openings of our Police Helpline to support officers at the roadside.

Erroneous vehicle seizures

MIB recognized the challenges some insurers faced with erroneous vehicle seizures in the weeks immediately following Navigate Go Live.

We worked closely with police partners and advised officers to exercise caution at the roadside. We extended the opening hours of our police helpline to support officers. Our website was kept regularly updated and our social media channels reminded drivers to have their insurance details to hand.

However, a number of vehicles were erroneously seized, and we are reimbursing insurers for any reasonable compensation paid by them to their customers under their complaints handling process, where the erroneous seizure was a direct result of the initial challenges in uploading data to Navigate.   

So far, we have received a small number of applications for compensation from insurers.