News
California Insurance Commissioner Lara under investigation by ethics regulator
Review opened over 5-star trips, air upgrades, thousands of dollars of fares
California’s insurance regulator is under growing scrutiny as the state’s ethics watchdog reviews allegations that taxpayer dollars funded dozens of costly international trips by high-profile Commissioner Ricardo Lara.
According to ABC7, the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) has opened a review after investigative reporting revealed Lara embarked on at least 48 trips since 2019, with unclear or undocumented business justifications for many of them. Records obtained show taxpayers covered significant expenses, including five-star hotels, luxury transportation, and upgraded flights.
Auto Insurance Report - Sept 2025 ClaimBuyout Feature
ClaimBuyout continues to deliver results for vehicle owners who do not want to keep their vehicle after an accident and would rather sell and replace.
We are delighted to have Auto Insurance Report share more about what we're doing at ClaimBuyout and how we're another option in the auto claims process.
A Third Option: Paying Cash For Repairable Auto Claims
Some drivers look at their car after a collision and wish their insurer would just total the mess. But until now, if the carrier decided to repair the damage, the policyholder had little choice other than to take the tainted car back.
ClaimBuyout, a company launched in 2020, is working with carriers to introduce a new choice for cranky policyholders with a repairable claim: a cash offer for the vehicle’s pre-accident value. Two top 25 carriers and about a dozen smaller auto insurers now offer the option.
Reprinted with Permission Of The Publisher (September 29, 2025 - Vol. 33#5/1540)
Research
Turning miles into meaning: Arity’s annual driving behavior report - Arity
We dug into our trillions of miles of driving data from 2022 – 2025 to reveal driving behavior patterns and provide commentary on America’s driving experience.
The ripple effects of the pandemic (hybrid work, where people live in relation to their workplace) continue to affect traffic, while more frequent weather-related events disrupt our transportation habits in short, intense bursts. What better way to showcase the depth and breadth of Arity’s data than by using different audience segments, historical trends, macro behaviors, and granular details to tell stories and develop actionable observations about the way we move?
The result is a series of short chapters about our lives on the road, informed by all the ways that individuals, businesses, and municipalities can leverage Arity’s mobility data insights to make more informed decisions.
Read our report to find out:
- How have post-pandemic driver behaviors shifted this year?
- How have return-to-office (RTO) mandates reshaped commuter patterns?
- How did natural disasters such as Hurricane Helene and the L.A. wildfires affected driving patterns?
- And much more
What’s Ahead for Collision Repair Industry’s Recent ‘Roller Coaster Ride’ - Autobody News
Sean Carey is seeing some “green shoots of recovery” for the collision repair industry that has experienced a “roller coaster ride” the past two years.
“My belief is we’re going to be back by 4 or 5% in 2026,” Carey, a long-time industry observer with SCG Management Consultants, told the more than 200 attendees at the Collision Industry Electronic Commerce Association (CIECA) CONNEX conference in Nashville in late September.
“It’s going to be a good market.”
Carey kicked off the conference with a quick look back at the prior 24 months, in which he said the collision repair industry has experienced a downturn of about $5 billion due to COVID aftereffects, reduced vehicle sales, and aggressive insurance price increases.
“Those of you in the supply chain world have been in a world of hurt for the past year and a half,” Carey said. “Those of you in the repair world are looking around and wondering where the hell all the work went. So we are all in this sort of downturn swing and crazy roller coaster ride together.”
But already heading into the fourth quarter of 2025, he’s seeing signs of recovery. Lower new-vehicle sales during and post-pandemic mean fewer leased vehicles have been and will be returning for the next couple of years. The elimination of government incentives for sales of new electric vehicles will also push up demand for used EVs.
AI in Insurance
9 in 10 businesses interested in insurance for Gen-AI-related risks
Over 90% of businesses worldwide have expressed interest in insurance coverage for Generative AI (Gen AI) risks, with two-thirds willing to pay at least 10% higher premiums for such coverage, according to a new report by the Geneva Association.
The Geneva Association surveyed 600 corporate insurance decision-makers across China, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US to understand how businesses perceive Gen AI risks and their demand for related insurance solutions.
Findings show rapid adoption of Gen AI into products, services, and internal operations, with 71% of respondents having implemented Gen AI in at least one function. While this presents significant opportunities for innovation and efficiency, it also introduces complex risks, including defective outputs, biased recommendations, intellectual property infringements, and cybersecurity concerns—particularly when Gen AI models hallucinate or replicate protected content.
The report revealed that demand for Gen AI insurance coverage is strikingly strong, with medium-to-large firms, technology-intensive sectors, and businesses with high exposure or prior severe failures showing the strongest appetite.
Cross-market comparisons indicate that the greatest immediate opportunities for insurers are in the US and China, where adoption and insurance demand are highest, while continental Europe trails behind.
Among the specific Gen-AI-related risks for which businesses seek coverage, cybersecurity risks rank highest, cited by more than 50% of respondents, followed by liability risks to customers and suppliers, and general operational risks.
However, market challenges remain. Difficulties in verifying Gen AI risks and the potential for large losses raise insurability concerns, echoing challenges seen in cyber insurance.
Insurance's 'Agentic AI' Problem | Insurance Thought Leadership
Terminology inflation around 'agentic AI' creates confusion in the market: Insurtech vendors are just rebranding existing automation.
Walk through any insurtech conference today and you'll hear "agentic AI" mentioned at every turn. Every vendor booth promises autonomous systems that can think, act, and learn. But when you examine these solutions more closely, many turn out to be large language model (LLM) implementations with intelligent automation added. These are valuable advances, certainly, but not the autonomous agents they claim to be.
This terminology inflation creates a fundamental problem. When insurance executives hear every vendor claiming to have "agentic AI," the market becomes so cluttered that companies that invest in building these new capabilities get lost among rebranded automations.
Tycho Speekenbrink is head of AI at Gain Life.
Announcements
Allstate reshuffles leadership, names Mario Rizzo as COO | Reuters
Allstate (ALL.N), opens new tab on Wednesday named Mario Rizzo as chief operating officer, responsible for the property-liability and protection services businesses.
Rizzo, who was previously president of property-liability, will be succeeded in that role by Chief Financial Officer Jess Merten, the insurer said.
Merten will report to Rizzo.
John Dugenske, president of investments and corporate strategy, will serve as interim CFO while the company conducts an external search for the role.
"These leadership changes are the next logical step to complete our transformative growth initiative and enable us to leverage artificial intelligence," CEO Tom Wilson said. In July, Allstate reported a jump in second-quarter profit, driven by strong underwriting performance and increased investment returns.
Gerber Collision & Glass Signs Enterprise Agreement to License Mitchell Cloud Estimating | Mitchell
Mitchell and Gerber Collision & Glass, one of the largest multi-site operators (MSOs) in North America, today jointly announced that they have signed a multi-year enterprise licensing agreement. The agreement gives all current and future Gerber repair centers access to Mitchell Cloud Estimating with Integrated Repair Procedures and the company’s Paintless Dent Repair (PDR) calculator.
“Both *Mitchell and Gerber share a long history of leadership in the collision industry,” said Debbie Day, executive vice president and general manager of Mitchell**. “We are honored to build on our existing relationship and continue our collaboration with Gerber, providing their repair centers with innovative, cloud-first technologies that can assist them in improving efficiency, streamlining workflows and enhancing customer and carrier satisfaction.”
Cotality introduces OneHomeowner
Cotality has launched OneHomeowner, a platform that gives U.S. homeowners a single portal to manage their property, powered by its CoreAI technology and industry data.
According to the CEO, it’s a major step forward in transforming how people view homeownership and manage their homes in a truly data-driven way.
OneHomeowner is a dashboard that helps homeowners manage their property in one place. Users can track value, equity, mortgage rates, taxes, and savings; get a personalized maintenance plan; keep records of systems and documents; identify value-adding projects; and view neighborhood trends, sales, and permits.
Relativity6 Launches Agent Marvin: The First Zero-Question Commercial Underwriting Platform
Relativity6, a leading innovator in insurance technology, today announced the launch of the Agent Marvin, the industry's first zero-question commercial underwriting platform. This groundbreaking solution eliminates the traditional underwriting questionnaire process by leveraging advanced artificial intelligence to automatically gather, verify, and analyze business data from multiple sources in real-time.
“Agent Marvin represents a paradigm shift in commercial insurance underwriting, combining multiple large language models (LLMs) with comprehensive data sourcing from web platforms, government filings, and hundreds of curated datasets. The platform's proprietary AI engine intelligently evaluates all available data sources and makes real-time determinations about which business data points are most accurate at any given moment,” says CEO Alan Ringvald.
First-of-Its-Kind Multi-LLM & Multi-Source Architecture
What sets the AgentMarvin platform apart is its innovative multi-LLM approach, which harnesses the unique strengths of several large language models working in concert. This distributed intelligence system provides more robust analysis, reduces the risk of AI hallucinations, and ensures comprehensive evaluation of complex business scenarios.
Telematics, Driving & Insurance
CMT Launches StreetVision, the First AI Road-Safety Platform That Predicts and Prevents Crashes - Cambridge Mobile Telematics
[Ed. Note: See also related webinar below]
Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), the world’s largest telematics provider, today launched StreetVision, the first artificial intelligence (AI) platform that identifies road risk, makes roads safer, and measures countermeasure impact with advanced analytics.
StreetVision helps transportation safety officials visualize and predict where crashes are most likely to occur, prioritize countermeasures, and rapidly assess results through an intuitive roadway safety dashboard.
“Safer roads save lives, strengthen communities, and power local economies. This is the mission we are advancing with StreetVision,” said William V. Powers, Co-Founder & CEO of CMT. “For over 15 years, CMT has worked with our partners to help people drive safer, preventing more than 100,000 crashes. Now, with StreetVision, we’re bringing that same innovation to the entire road-safety ecosystem, from infrastructure, to policy, to safety initiatives, to education campaigns. This is the next evolution of road safety: using mobility insights to transform how societies invest in road safety so every community can reduce risks, accelerate improvements, and build safer systems from the ground up, preventing the next crash from happening.”
Since 2020, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that more than 200,000 people have died on U.S. roads. In 2021 alone, distraction was linked to 12,405 deaths — 28% of all traffic fatalities. NHTSA also reports that crashes cost the U.S. economy $340 billion in 2019, with 4.5 million people seriously injured.
StreetVision Launch Webinar - Tuesday, October 14 at 1:00 p.m. EST | Cambridge Mobile Telematics
Predict risk, make roads safer, and measure impact with StreetVision
Proactive Road Safety with StreetVision: Predict & Prevent Crashes
StreetVision is the first AI platform that identifies road risk, makes roads safer, and measures countermeasure impact with advanced analytics.
StreetVision’s street-level visualization and analysis across roadways gives traffic engineers and planners, safety program managers, and public safety officials access to risk insights never before available. Learn how you can design and implement more effective crash reduction measures in your communities with StreetVision.