DON’T MISS THE BOAT: RATE INSURANCE COMPANIES IN WMABA SURVEY

LOCAL NEWS

DON’T MISS THE BOAT: RATE INSURANCE COMPANIES IN WMABA SURVEY

If you spend an hour in a room full of collision repair professionals, you’re bound to hear a few stories about the industry’s challenging interactions with insurance carriers, but all insurers are not created equal.

Borne from a desire to know how claims are handled in the Mid-Atlantic region, WMABA has opened its second biennial “Shops Rate Insurers” survey as part of its ongoing efforts to create and provide consumer-driven resources, tools and information to help the collision repair industry at-large.

Conducted online, the survey allows repairers to anonymously rate insurance company behaviors in several categories, including shop relations/claims handling, customer experience, insurer knowledge base, overall fairness, insurer payment for proper procedures and transparency. Collision shops will rate each insurer on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest.

Survey respondents also have the opportunity to share specific feedback regarding the largest insurers by market share to help identify trends and issues as they emerge and develop resources and solutions to support WMABA members and their customers.

WMABA launched its first Insurance Survey in December 2018, attracting high participation. Results from the previous survey supported many expected perspectives – both positive and negative – about certain carriers, but it also yielded some unexpected findings. Additional comments from survey respondents indicated beliefs that insurers are only concerned about profits and that they are tragically prone to disregarding OEM. Not surprisingly, many repairers expressed frustrations with adjusters’ continuous insistence on the “We don’t pay for that” narrative.

The pandemic provided many new challenges for collision repairers, including insurer delays related to photo estimating and refusal to pay for disinfectant application, and WMABA expects some of those challenges to be reflected in the responses collected this time around.

The information compiled provides a good resource for consumers seeking more knowledge about these carriers and their practices, and survey results are an effective tool for starting conversations with customers who can also use the information to help them in the policy-buying process. WMABA anticipates that the information collected on approximately two dozen carriers will also be beneficial when approaching consumer protection agencies regarding inappropriate insurer behaviors in the future.

By identifying the specific market tactics individual insurers use in their market, WMABA plans to use the information to demonstrate the repair industry’s perceptions about those practices to carriers and hopes to engage in meaningful dialogues that will hopefully improve shops’ relationships with local carriers.

Results of the 2022 survey will be published in a future edition of Hammer & Dolly, just as the results of the 2018-19 survey were published in the May 2019 issue (available at bit.ly/ins1819).

There’s no movement in still waters, so it’s time for collision repairers to rock the boat. Positive change will never occur unless repairers use their collective voices to stand up for their customers, their shops and the industry at-large. WMABA’s Insurance Survey offers a quick and easy way to share your thoughts and be part of positive progress.

Although the 2022 “Shops Rate Insurers” survey is a local undertaking, WMABA encourages participation from industry professionals outside the region as well. Share your opinions by taking the survey at bit.ly/rateinsurers. H&D