What is ABÍ

 

Project origins

ABÍ was founded in April 1970, but long before then Icelandic vehicle insurance companies had been investigating the conditions they would have to fulfil in order to join the Green Card cooperation that had been initiated by several European countries early in 1953.

Purpose:

Initially ABÍ operations concerned only driving and damage of foreign vehicles in Iceland, driving Icelandic cars abroad and issuing international insurance cards for vehicles (green cards). All these operations were based on multinational agreements, e.g. on the running of National Bureaux. ABÍ was the Icelandic national bureau, and this was endorsed in Icelandic traffic and customs legislation. The purpose was to facilitate traffic between European countries and a number of countries outside Europe that had substantial communications with specific European countries. This international cooperation was run as the Council of Bureaux, now called the COB.

Legal provisions:

As cooperation between European countries increased, particularly within the European Union, many regulations were set that brought new tasks and obligations for the vehicle insurance companies that operated in these countries. The objective was to assure the position of the party suffering damage as well as possible. In most countries these new tasks were assigned to the national bureaux, just as was the case in Iceland with the legislation relating to ABÍ. So ABÍ operates today as both a centre for settling claims and as an information centre for Iceland.