Windscreen Insurance Certificate To Be Dropped?

Cars / Motoring / Insurance
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The text translates as:

It is a 36-year-old habit that could soon disappear. The insurance certificate, that little square of green paper that you have to display on the windscreen of your vehicle every year, could soon be history. It is the insurers who are asking for it. Discussions are underway with the Ministries of the Economy, Transport and the Interior.

“At the time, it was created to fight against non-insurance. But today we have all the technical means to simplify the lives of the French and improve the fight against fraud,” Franck Le Vallois, the managing director of France Assureurs, the federation of 247 French insurance companies, explained to Le Parisien.

The police can in fact check in the Fichier des véhicules assurés (FAV), by indicating the number plate, whether the car they are checking is insured or not. This file was created in 2016 and gendarmes and police officers have had access to it since 2019. All new insured vehicles must be registered within 72 hours.

For insurers, the abolition of the green sticker would represent a real source of savings. 50 million insurance certificates are printed each year. That’s as much paper saved with the stamps that go with it.

A decree must be published to authorise the abolition of the paper vignette. This will not happen immediately, as a new government must first be formed. Once the decree is published, insurers intend to “prepare the minds” of their customers before abolishing the little green insurance sticker for good.

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Tax disc has ditched in the UK for years now…

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cost saving exercise and nothing else

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You’d prefer you insurance premiums to increase then?

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No tax disc requirement in France… this is the insurance vignette…

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Yes I know! The point is that having no physical proof of something car related works just fine!

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Almost anything which saves money and saves the trees… has my vote :wink:

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That would be brilliant… we’ve been asking for something like this for years but I think we’ll follow the UK lead as always with a good decade late :slight_smile:

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It would save money on postage also plus the paper & envelope etc.

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I don’t recall the UK ever requiring a disc in the windscreen concerning Insurance… Excise duty (tax disc) yes, but not insurance. Don’t even need to carry the certificate with you in the car since, if stopped by the police and asked to produce it, you can do so within 7 days at a Police Station of your choice (along with your driving licence).

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I am assuming that the Annual Insurance Document will still be posted to clients.

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could more usefully be emailed to clients as confirmation, leaving the choice over whether to print on paper is required.
I’m sure Grahame Pigney will be delighted - bless him!

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I would prefer that the large profit made by insurance companies was cut, I would prefer that there was no automatic renewal of contracts which penalises the loyal customer.Need I go .

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yes of course you can go if you want to… :grin:

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Fair enough, I’ve only been in France for 20+ years… but we’ve always had the opportunity to cancel/move elsewhere with Insurance.

Others might have a different experience, but I certainly have not…
In fact, we’ve just received the renewal stuff for our Old Cars (well in advance) and, it’s quite clear, if we want to cancel… we do XYZ…

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Nothing proposed is for the benefit of the client quite the opposite. As printing out costs me money not “them” so doesn’t save trees.
But I won t go on eh😆

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That will need some explanation.
If it’s a precursor to unnecessary paper trails, postage and the like the customer can benefit in the long run, surely.

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Except that, certainly in recent history, you couldn’t get the vehicle taxed until it was insured.

Admittedly insurance could lapse while the tax was still valid (even within 1 month) but the presence of a tax disk implies the vehicle was insured when it was issued.

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Thankfully that is no longer of interest to us.

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The checking of insurance, road tax & mot is all done automatically using ANPR as equiped Police cars travel around in UK.

Is a similar system in France checking insurance & CT status?