CCC Crash Course Report Shows Macrotrends Having Profound Impact on Collision Industry  April 14th 2023

CCC Crash Course Report Shows Macrotrends Having Profound Impact on Collision Industry  

A shift in consumer driving behaviors since the pandemic, the rise of AI and labor shortages are some macroeconomic trends impacting the collision industry, according to the 28th edition of CCC Intelligent Solutions’ Crash Course Report, “ignite EXPERIENCE.”

Meanwhile, there are advancements in vehicle technology, including advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and electric vehicles (EVs), said Jason Verlen, CCC’s vice president, product marketing.

“The macrotrends are having effects on how the industry functions,” said Verlen. “The industry is changing quickly.”

Subtitled “The Era of Experience,” Crash Course 2023 includes data from 260 million claims-related transactions, 50 billion miles of driving data, and millions of auto physical damage and auto bodily injury and personal injury protection (PIP)/medical payments (MedPay) casualty claims data and analysis.

Verlen shared learnings from the report and the impact to the industry and consumers.

DIGIN 2023: Nationwide embedded insurance

Have you heard a lot about "Embedded insurance," and have some questions about what it is, where to start, and how to form a digital strategy around it?

At DIGIN 2023, Nationwide's Rebecca Nickoll, assistant vice president of Strategic Partnerships and Brian Disbrow, assistant vice president of Tech Enterprise Partnerships, will have the answers you seek in their session, "Unleashing the Power of Embedded Insurance." They spoke with Digital Insurance's Grace Crane to preview their talk.

Predict & Prevent™: What Commercial Fleet Owners Ought to Know About Telematics and Other Tech Tools That Target Losses

Telematics and crash avoidance technologies are predicting and preventing accidents, making our roads safer.

If you’d asked him ten years ago what technology would revolutionize road safety, Matt Moore, senior vice president with the Highway Loss Data Institute, probably would have said self-driving cars. 

Back then, “everyone was writing about how automated driving is going to be the end of the need for automobile insurance,” Moore said.   

But predictions are just educated guesses. The promise of vehicles that run on autopilot while the driver monitors their progress and intercedes only in an emergency “have not yet come to pass and the earliest results are saying it might not come to pass,” according to Moore. In fact, 400 vehicles with self-driving capabilities were involved in crashes, between July 2021 and May 2022, per data from the The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  

Sfara Expands Emergency Service Capabilities to Nearly 40% of the World’s Population

This means that customers on the Sfara platform are covered, not only in their base country, but also while traveling to other countries where Sfara offers services, like India (where you wouldn’t assume to be covered by your emergency service plan while traveling). Sfara continues expanding services to new countries and territories to achieve its goal of worldwide emergency coverage for everyone.

“One of Sfara’s goals is to provide transportable safety on the smartphone, so that anyone can be covered by emergency services no matter where they go. With the addition of India to our services, if you are a European or from the Americas, you can still be covered if you travel to India for a few days or a few months,” said Erik Goldman, CEO of Sfara.

Sfara’s services include crash detection and response, plus personal safety through features like the innovative Sfara Triple-Tap™, which contacts an emergency coordinator when the phone is tapped three times successively. This makes a discreet call for help when someone is faced with an active threat.

From Agriculture to Cyber, Parametric Covers Are Conquering New Territory

Parametric insurance — coverages tied to specific triggers that can cover any resulting loss — has been around for decades. But in recent years, it has been growing rapidly and expanding into areas outside the weather and seismic coverages that have been its bread and butter.

Parametric offers several advantages over traditional indemnity coverages for some applications, including speedier payouts, flexibility, coverage of perils not coverable by indemnity insurance, and a simplicity of design that can be more transparent and less prone to litigation.

While it is difficult to quantify the growth of the sector, there seems to be broad agreement that it is substantial.

“We just doubled last year,” said Stephane Godier, AXA Climate’s parametrics expert. “So that’s the trend, and it gives you an idea of how far and how fast we’re going.”

According to Tanguy Touffut, cofounder and CEO of Descartes Underwriting, an international MGA and risk-carrying underwriter of parametric products, “It’s clearly somewhere between five and eight billion.”

Game Changing Strategies Execution Reveal Insurance Leaders in New Majesco Research

Majesco, a global leader of cloud insurance software solutions for insurance business transformation, today announced the availability of a new thought leadership report based on primary research with insurers, Game Changing Strategic Priorities Redefining Market Leaders.

The new report takes a comprehensive look at insurers’ strategic priorities and responses to the intensification of market shifts, macro-economic challenges and shifting risks – creating potential headwinds to insurer digital business transformation strategies and plans. Because times like these can be problematic and precarious for the future, it is more important than ever for insurers to rethink their priorities and approach, turning headwinds into a tailwinds to leap ahead. The old proverb, "Necessity is the mother of invention" gains new relevance.

"Insurers must accelerate their digital business transformation because technology and new operating models provide a foundation to adapt, innovate and deliver at speed --- helping to create a tailwind and path forward," stated Denise Garth, Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco.

"The rising importance and adoption of platform technologies, Cloud, APIs, microservices, digital capabilities, new/non-traditional data sources, and advanced analytics capabilities are now crucial to growth, profitability, customer engagement, channel reach, and workforce changes. Given the pace and multi-faceted nature of digital transformation, leading insurers are focusing on their strategic priorities and investments by being nimble, creative and bold, leaping forward from the competition."

The Dawn of Data First (not Documents)?

Marsh, Howden and Whitespace point the way to a truly digital speciality market.

In July 2022 InsTech we at InsTech published a report called Marketplaces and Exchanges – 10 ways they are re-shaping insurance. In it we observed that “it is difficult now to ever envisage one single exchange or handful of exchanges in the middle of the global risk ecosystem on which every stakeholder is willing to play. Instead, the insurance industry is going to have to confront the fact that there are and will continue to be a myriad of marketplaces. … each seeking to tackle different industry issues and apply new techniques, technologies and models”.

The report went on to observe that “This creates a new challenge for the specialty market. For a decade or two most of the industry has assumed that market forces and/or the dominant industry players would take responsibility for creating a trading solution that fulfilled market needs. There was therefore no need to do anything proactive - the strategy of choice was to do nothing and wait for the solution to emerge, safe in the knowledge that your company alone could not make it. This is no longer a safe assumption to make”.

Robin Merttens, Executive Chariman, InsTech

Helen Christopher FCIM Chartered Marketer Anthony Siggers Adam Kemmis Betty Tom Goulston Tim Rayner Richard Smith CCRA Reid Stanway Ian Summers Ian Meadows Daniel Prince Paul Hillier Lee Timms Marcus Broome Mark Geoghegan Daren Rudd 👓 Hugh Choudhury Paolo Cuomo

The General Insurance® Launches New Brand Campaign To Give Drivers A Break When They Need It Most

The General is on a mission to establish itself as the most empathetic, flexible insurance company in the nation. Today, The General kicked off the next stage in a continued brand evolution journey by announcing the launch of a new campaign, titled "The Break," with the goal of reaching drivers who need a break in life, and on their car insurance.

"The Break" campaign shows how The General puts itself into its customers' shoes and gives drivers a break when they need one the most — which is why the brand has been providing quality insurance and flexibility in policies and payments since 1963.

"The Break" campaign includes new advertisements, partnerships and a brand refresh with both an updated logo and evolved General character. Across all assets, the campaign showcases The General's simple belief: when times are tough and it feels like things aren't going your way, getting a break on your car insurance can make all the difference. The brand's four new ads launch this spring and summer and showcase the specific breaks that The General has been giving its customers for years, such as flexible payment options and choosing your own payment due date

WTW’s Swift not ruling out reinsurance re-entry

Speaking on The Insurer TV’s Leading Voices programme, Alastair Swift – head of global lines of business within WTW’s corporate risk and broking division – said the firm is focused on every aspect of “specialisation business” in order to go as “broad, deep or narrow” as required for clients.

“If reinsurance was to figure in that in the future, it might do so if we thought it was something that was going to create value for our client base, and particularly if we think around the capital side of business,” Swift said.

“For us, the key for our client base is ensuring that we're capturing and developing as much capital as we possibly can, and the right sort of solutions,” he added.

“We hope we'll be able to do that through insurance and distribution, but it may be at some stage that we also have to think that there are other avenues from the point of view of reinsurance, and other capital market vehicles that we'd want to consider bringing to those clients,” he said.