Category Archives: Auto Insurance

Auto Insurance, Business Insurance, Highway Safety

Truckers’ Premiums Keep Rising, Despite Safety Improvements, Coverage Changes

Leave a comment

As with so many other goods and services, insurance for commercial trucks has become more costly since the pandemic – but a closer look at the numbers shows that this trend pre-dates COVID-19’s economic and supply-chain disruption.

“Despite reductions in insurance coverage, rising deductibles, and improved safety, almost all motor carriers experienced substantial increases in insurance costs from 2018 to 2020,” according to a recent report by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI). And, while frequency and severity have been on the rise from 2009 to 2018, the report shows the rate of insurance cost increases during the period far exceeding the crash rate increase.

ATRI’s observations are consistent with findings in a recent study by Triple-I and the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) that the phenomenon known as “social inflation” accounted for $20 billion in commercial auto liability claims between 2010 and 2019. 

“External factors that go well beyond carrier safety force commercial trucking insurance costs to increase,” says Triple-I Chief Insurance Officer Dale Porfilio. “The higher premiums ultimately tend to be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services.”

ATRI recognizes three key areas of influence on premiums beyond crash history and policy components:

  • Economic impacts on the insurance industry,
  • Carrier-specific factors, and
  • Social inflation.

External economic conditions, including general inflation and rising health-care costs, contribute to increased insurance premium rates.

“Medical advances help save lives, but these treatments directly contribute to higher medical costs,” ATRI points out. “Similarly, technological advances in motor vehicles contribute to increasing costs associated with repairing them; electronics now make up 40 percent of the cost of a new vehicle.”

These higher costs affect premiums through larger claims and losses that have to be incorporated into pricing.

Premium rates also are affected by carrier-specific considerations like operational sectors, cargo values, states or regions of operation, company growth, and commitment to safety culture and technologies.

“Carriers demonstrating consistent year-over-year improvements in safety technology adoption, safe driver hiring and training practices, and crash history can potentially lower their premium costs, despite the current adverse environment,” ATRI said.

“Social inflation” refers to the impact of litigation and government policy trends on insurance claims and, ultimately, costs to policyholders. Social attitudes and behaviors affect insurance payouts through changes in laws and propensity to litigate, and jury awards don’t necessarily reflect logical conclusions or precedents. Jury decisions can be influenced by emotions, state and local laws or procedures, and plaintiff bar tactics. In recent years, practices like third-party litigation funding – investment by hedge funds and other third parties in lawsuits in return for a share in the awards – have played an increasing role in social inflation.

Auto Insurance, Highway Safety

Acting to Curb Rising Auto Fatalities

Leave a comment

By Max Dorfman, Research Writer, Triple-I

After years of steady declines, traffic fatalities in the United States are on the rise, contributing to increasing auto insurance rates. This comes despite declines in the average number of miles driven due to the pandemic. In 2020, 38,680 deaths occurred on U.S. roads, the most since 2007.

In late January, federal transportation officials released a plan to reduce the tens of thousands of road deaths that occur every year, an issue that has become more significant since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We cannot and should not accept these fatalities as simply a part of everyday life in America,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “No one will accomplish this alone. It will take all levels of government, industries, advocates, engineers and communities across the country working together toward the day when family members no longer have to say good-bye to loved ones because of a traffic crash.”

Pandemic’s impact

Roadway safety in the United States had increased for decades before the pandemic, primarily due to enforcement of seat belt laws and vehicle safety features, such as airbags, improved braking, and stability control. Yet, the first year of the pandemic saw a 7.2 percent rise in U.S. roadway deaths from 2019. Some experts saw this rise in reckless driving as due, in part, to the isolation associated with the pandemic lockdowns. 

“You’ve been cooped up, locked down, and have restrictions you chafe at,” said Frank Farley, a professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia.

In the early months of the COVID pandemic, insurers were giving rebates for personal auto policies, spurred by reductions in miles driven and anticipation of fewer accidents. However, it quickly became clear that reduced miles driven didn’t automatically lead to fewer deadly accidents. Instead, reckless driving – and fatalities – increased.

The end of pandemic shutdowns hasn’t helped either, with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimating that 31,720 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes for the first nine months of 2021, rising about 12 percent from the 28,325 fatalities projected for the first nine months of 2020. In Q1 of 2020, traffic fatalities were 1.12 per 100 million miles driven. By the end of Q3 of 2021, this number had spiked to 1.41 per 100 million miles driven.

What can be done?

The federal infrastructure deal promises to spend more on new safety measures, with the goal of eliminating road deaths. With this in mind, the Department of Transportation is implementing a Safe System Approach, under the premise that fatal accidents can be avoided if individuals understand the need for safe driving and accept that crashes can be avoided. The aim is zero traffic deaths.

Indeed, the Safe System Approach, which has been adopted across several countries in Europe, has seen remarkably positive results. Traffic fatalities fell 50 percent In Sweden and the Netherlands between 1994 and 2015.

“There are communities that have gotten to [zero traffic fatalities] already,” added Buttigieg. “And I’m not just talking about Oslo,” which experienced zero pedestrian deaths in 2019, “but a place like Hoboken, N.J., in the U.S. has seen multiple years with zero deaths.”

Auto insurance premium rates are affected by many factors, and accident and fatality trends are a major ones. Reckless driving trends – combined with increasing auto repair costs associated with safety, efficiency, and comfort – can only continue to put upward pressure on rates. Individual behavior and government policies must converge in the direction of improving responsibility and safety for all drivers.

Auto Insurance, Insurers and the Economy, Legal Environment

Triple-I, CAS Quantify Social Inflation’s Impact on Commercial Auto

Leave a comment

The phenomenon known as “social inflation” accounted for $20 billion in commercial auto liability claims between 2010 and 2019, a new study by Triple-I and the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) finds.

Social inflation isn’t a new term. Warren Buffett used it in the 1970s to describe “a broadening definition by society and juries of what is covered by insurance policies.” It has since become common parlance among insurers and risk managers for a range of factors causing losses in certain lines to rise faster than general inflation would predict. These include:

  • Class-action lawsuits;
  • Growing awards from sympathetic juries;
  • Third-party litigation funding, in which investors finance lawsuits against large companies in return for a share in the settlement; and
  • Rollbacks of tort reforms that were intended to control costs in the wake of the 1980s “liability crisis”.

Hard to measure, important to understand

Reliably quantifying social inflation for rating and reserving purposes is hard because it’s just one of many factors pressuring pricing. The paper, authored by actuaries James Lynch and David Moore, uses “standard actuarial metrics and visualizations to demonstrate how actuarial insights can be presented to an interested lay audience, such as lawmakers, regulators, the news media, and the public.”

This is an important contribution to the public policy discussion because actuaries are well positioned to spot shifts in loss severity.

Separately, Triple-I has published an “Issues Brief” that succinctly describes the drivers of social inflation, as well as its potential impact on insurers, policyholders, and the economy and society.

“More frequent suits and bigger awards can lead to increased insurance costs as rates are adjusted to reflect the changing risk profile – or even to insurers ceasing to write particular forms of coverage,” the brief says. “Higher premiums tend to be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices and, in extreme cases, can ripple through the entire economy, creating conditions analogous to the 1980s liability crisis.”

In the 1980s, liability claims were pushing the U.S. insurance industry to the brink of collapse. Tort reforms – ranging from capping non-economic damages and limiting contingency fees to specifying statutes of limitations and eliminating “joint and several” liability – were enacted, and losses declined. It has been argued that legislative efforts to roll back these reforms in many states have contributed to social inflation, but the research is not conclusive.

Auto Insurance

IRC Releases State-by-State Auto Insurance Affordability Rankings

Leave a comment

Louisiana, Florida, and Michigan remain the least affordable states for auto insurance, while Iowa remains the most affordable, according to a new study from the Insurance Research Council (IRC). 

The report, Auto Insurance Affordability: Countrywide Trends and State Comparisons, looks at auto insurance expenditures as a share of median household income. The IRC affordability index ranges from a low of 1.02 percent in Iowa to a high of 3.09 percent in Louisiana. A higher ratio indicates less affordable insurance in the state.

The index uses median household income data from the U.S. Census Bureau and auto insurance expenditure data published by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).  The rankings are based on 2018 data (the most recent available). Since 2018, Michigan has enacted reforms aimed at lowering auto insurance expenditures for Michigan’s drivers.

Some affordability studies estimate insurance costs by gathering quotes for minimum coverage.  The NAIC measure, by contrast, provides an estimate of what consumers actually spend per insured vehicle.  The index isn’t intended to serve as an absolute threshold for when auto insurance becomes affordable. This would be entirely subjective, as different parties can reasonably disagree about what constitutes affordable insurance. Rather, it’s a tool to compare auto insurance affordability over time and across jurisdictions.

Underserved communities not directly addressed

The index also does not address the important issue of affordability among underserved populations, which would require more granular data than used for this analysis. It is important to note that affordability for traditionally underserved consumers is determined by underlying costs, just as it is for the overall population.

A recent analysis of NAIC data showed that the higher premiums in lower-income ZIP codes were in line with the higher claim costs in those areas. Efforts to improve auto insurance affordability in those areas must address these higher costs.

While state-level data cannot directly address affordability among these populations, collaborative efforts to reduce the following key cost drivers can improve affordability for all consumers:

  • Accident frequency related to traffic density, road conditions, and other factors that lead to more frequent accidents in some states.
  • Repair costs, which vary widely by state.
  • Tendency to file injury claims, which tends to be higher in less affordable states.
  • Injury claim costs.
  • Attorney involvement, which is associated with higher claim costs and delays in settlement.
  • Claim abuse – Insurance fraud is a factor in the high cost of insurance. 

In a letter responding to a federal request for information, Triple-I earlier this year said U.S. auto insurers accurately price their policies by using a wide variety of rating factors.  All these factors must conform to the laws and regulations of the state in which the auto insurance policies are sold.

“Lower-risk drivers should pay less for auto insurance, and premiums have closely tracked broader U.S. economic trends for decades,” Triple-I told the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) in its letter.

The letter also said the rating factors U.S. auto insurers use to price their policies not only serve their purpose but are constantly retested to ensure their accuracy and reliability.

Learn More From the Triple-I Blog

Triple-I: Rating-Factor Variety Drives Accuracy of Auto Insurance Pricing

Here’s What’s Happening to Your Auto Insurance Costs

Auto Insurance Premiums Face Downward Pressure Due to COVID-19

Nevada Class Actions Against Auto Insurers Risk Hurting Policyholders

Policyholder Dividends Soar as Auto Insurers Respond to Pandemic

Auto Insurance Rates Decline Across U.S.

Auto Damage Claims Growing Twice as Fast as Inflation: IRC Study

Auto Insurance, Insurers and the Economy, Market Conditions, Regulation

Triple-I: Rating-Factor Variety Drives Accuracy of Auto Insurance Pricing

Leave a comment

Lower-risk drivers should pay less for auto insurance, and premiums have closely tracked broader U.S. economic trends for decades, Triple-I told the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) this week.

In a letter responding to a federal Request for Information, Triple-I said U.S. auto insurers accurately price their policies by using a wide variety of rating factors.  All these factors must conform to the laws and regulations of the state in which the auto insurance policies are sold.

“There is no credible evidence that insurers charge more than they should, either across the broad market or in specific subsegments, such as neighborhood, race, income, education or occupation,” the Triple-I stated. The letter also said the rating factors U.S. auto insurers use to price their policies not only serve their purpose but are constantly retested to ensure their accuracy and reliability.

“If rating factors do their job well, they make insurance relatively inexpensive for some people and quite expensive for others,” the letter said. “In both cases, the assessment is correct. Drivers who present less risk pay less for coverage.”

The response to FIO’s information request highlighted how the appropriate price for an insurance policy varies greatly from customer to customer and from state to state.  Insurance is regulated by state governments.

“Insurance companies and their actuaries have focused on finding factors that make sure every customer pays the appropriate rate,” the Triple-I said. Rates are based on historical loss experience for similar risks. Premiums constitute the price customers pay for insurance coverage. 

Critics of U.S. auto insurer pricing practices have expressed concerns that certain rating factors, such as credit-based insurance scores and the geographic location of the customer’s residence, discriminate against lower-income drivers and minority groups. Triple-I explained that eliminating any rating factor – for whatever reason – forces those with less risk to overpay for auto insurance and allows those with greater risk to pay less than they should for auto insurance.

Interventions can backfire

“Eliminating factors does not affect the truth that they reveal, and if factors reveal that costs need to be high for a customer, banning them does nothing to change the underlying costs that are the reason the rate is high,” the Triple-I stated.

Regulators occasionally intervene in the rating process to make insurance less expensive for certain groups, citing the need to make insurance “affordable.”

“These interventions, however well-intentioned, can backfire in a spectacular way,” the Triple-I letter says, “raising the overall costs and severely reducing availability, as well as impeding innovations that could address the issue.”

Real problems need real solutions

Real solutions exist to make insurance more affordable, Triple-I says: “These solutions come not from tinkering with how insurers set prices but by addressing the costs that insurance covers.”

Improving the transportation environment and addressing societal issues that often force minorities and low- and moderate-income individuals to live and drive in circumstances where auto insurance costs the most are among the solutions suggested.

Extensive Triple-I research shows that rising claims costs have been the primary factor generating increased auto insurance rates.

Learn More From the Triple-I Blog

Here’s What’s Happening to Your Auto Insurance Costs

Auto Insurance Premiums Face Downward Pressure Due to COVID-19

Nevada Class Actions Against Auto Insurers Risk Hurting Policyholders

Policyholder Dividends Soar as Auto Insurers Respond to Pandemic

Auto Insurance Rates Decline Across U.S.

Auto Damage Claims Growing Twice as Fast as Inflation: IRC Study

Auto Insurance, Business Insurance, Business Risk, Emerging Risks, Insurers and the Economy, Legal Environment

Social Inflation:Eating the ElephantIn the Room

Leave a comment
  • It has been said the best way to eat an elephant is “one bite at a time.”
    Social inflation is an elephantine topic, so we’re launching a series of blog posts dedicated to each piece of it in turn, starting with litigation funding.

“Social inflation” refers to rising litigation costs and their impact on insurers’ claim payouts, loss ratios and, ultimately, how much policyholders pay for coverage. It’s an important issue to understand because – while the tactics associated with it typically affect businesses perceived as having “deep pockets” – social inflation has implications for individuals and for businesses of all sizes.

The insurance lines most affected are commercial auto, professional liability, product liability, and directors and officers liability. There also is evidence that private-passenger car insurance is beginning to be affected. As increased litigation costs drive up premiums, those increases tend to be passed along to consumers and can stifle investment in innovation that could create jobs and otherwise benefit the economy.

For more on this, see: Social Inflation: Evidence and Impact on Property-Casualty Insurance by the Insurance Research Council (IRC).]

Much of what is discussed and published on the topic has been more anecdotal than data based. Reliably quantifying social inflation for rating and reserving purposes is hard because it’s just one of many factors pressuring pricing. We’ve found that the most meaningful way to think about social inflation and its components is to compare their impact on claims losses over time with growth in inflation measures like the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Litigation Funding

It’s been said that the best way to eat an elephant is “one bite at a time.” Because of the diversity and complexity of social inflation’s causes and effects, we’re launching a series of blog posts dedicated to each one in turn. The first set of posts will look closely at litigation funding: the practice of third parties financing lawsuits in exchange for a share of any funds the plaintiffs might receive.

Litigation funding was once widely prohibited, but as bans have been eroded in recent decades, the practice has grown, spread, and become a contributor to social inflation.

[See: Litigation Funding Rises as Common-Law Bans Are Eroded by Courts on the Triple-I Blog]                                                                                                  

Litigation funding seemed a good place to begin this series because it’s a distinct legal strategy with a clear history that doesn’t involve a lot of the sociological subtleties inherent in other aspects of social inflation. We’ll look the emergence of the practice, how it came to the United States from abroad, and track its evolution with that of social inflation. We’ll also discuss the current state of litigation finance, along with ethical concerns that have been raised around it within the legal community.

This series will be led by IRC Vice President David Corum with support from our partners at The Institutes and input from our members, as well as experts beyond the insurance industry. As befits any discussion of a complex topic, we look forward to your reactions and insights.

More from the Triple-I Blog

What is social inflation? What can insurers do about it? (January 25, 2021)

Litigation funding rises as common-law bans are eroded by courts (December 29, 2020)

Lawyers’ group approves best practices to guide litigation funding (August 19, 2020)

Social inflation and COVID-19 (July 6, 2020)

IRC study: Social inflation is real, and it hurts consumers, businesses (June 2, 2020)

Florida dropped from 2020 “Judicial Hellholes” list (January 14, 2020)

Florida’s AOB crisis: A social-inflation microcosm (November 8, 2019)

Auto Insurance, Health & Safety, Highway Safety, Legal Environment

Studies: Car Crashes Rise as Recreational Cannabis Becomes Legal in States

Leave a comment

Connecticut this week became the latest state to legalize recreational use of marijuana, and more are expected to follow.

The increased marijuana use that accompanies legalization has raised concerns about road safety.

Researchers at Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) since 2014 have been examining how legalization has affected crash rates and insurance claims, and evidence is emerging that crash rates go up when states legalize recreational use and retail sales of marijuana.

The most recent of these studies, released on June 17 by the IIHS, shows that injury and fatal crash rates in California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington jumped in the months following relaxation of marijuana laws in each state. The five states experienced a 6 percent increase in injury crash rates and a 4 percent increase in fatal crash rates, compared with other Western states where recreational marijuana use was illegal during the study period.

Only the increase in injury crash rates was statistically significant.

“Our latest research makes it clear that legalizing marijuana for recreational use does increase overall crash rates,” says IIHS-HLDI President David Harkey. “That’s obviously something policymakers and safety professionals will need to address as more states move to liberalize their laws — even if the way marijuana affects crash risk for individual drivers remains uncertain.”

Insurance records show a similar increase in claims under collision coverage, which pays for damage to an at-fault, insured driver’s own vehicle, according to HLDI’s latest analysis. The legalization of retail sales in Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington was associated with a 4 percent increase in collision claim frequency compared with the other Western states from 2012 to 2019. That’s down slightly from the 6 percent increase HLDI identified in a previous study, which covered 2012  to 2018.

While the evidence that crash rates have increased in states that legalized marijuana is mounting, it appears that further study is needed to determine whether marijuana use alone is responsible. Preliminary data suggests people who use alcohol and marijuana together are accountable for most of the crashes.

Another factor may be that marijuana users in counties that do not allow retail sales are driving to counties that do. The increased travel could lead to more crashes, even if their crash risk per mile traveled is no higher than that of other drivers.

Auto Insurance, Insurers and the Economy

Auto insurance rates impacted by labor crunch, supply chain disruptions

Leave a comment

In a recent interview with CNBC, Dr. Michel Léonard, Triple-I vice president and senior economist, explained how the return to pre-pandemic driving levels is resulting in higher auto accident rates.

More accidents mean a larger volume of more expensive claims for insurers to pay because of higher repair costs, delays in repair time due to chip shortages, supply chain disruptions and a labor crunch.

The consumer price index showed that the auto insurance index was up 16.9 percent in May from the previous year, following a 6.4 percent rise in April from the previous year.

Elyse Greenspan, a managing director at Wells Fargo, said the year-over-year increase resulted from the premium base in May 2020, reflecting pandemic-related refunds. Triple-I analysis shows that due to the sharp declines in the number of miles driven, U.S. auto insurers returned $14 billion to their customers last year.

Greenspan describes the current auto insurance market as still soft even after recent rate increases. Not all insurers are raising rates, she added. “It’s still a good environment for consumers who are purchasing auto insurance.”

Auto Insurance, Theft

Valuable metals make catalytic converters an attractive target for thieves

Leave a comment

Huge spikes in catalytic converter theft have been reported throughout the nation in recent months. The anti-pollution devices contain precious metals such as platinum, palladium or rhodium and can be removed from the bottom of a car or truck in as little as five minutes.

Thieves are getting anywhere from $50 to $250 per converter from recyclers, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) and replacing the part can cost $900 or more.

In an effort to stem the thefts, the NICB has recently teamed up with several Virginia police departments to host catalytic converter etching events. During the events, mechanics etch and paint vehicle registration numbers onto the converters, which serves to track the parts if stolen.

Additional etching events are currently being scheduled in Virginia. The NICB encourages law enforcement across the nation to hold similar events to help combat catalytic converter theft.

Other theft prevention options include installing a steel shield that fits over the catalytic converter, requiring time and extra tools to remove the part; cages made of high-strength steel that’s difficult to cut; or stainless-steel cables welded from the catalytic converter to the car’s frame.

If your converter is stolen, the theft is covered by the optional comprehensive portion of your insurance policy in some cases. But you will be responsible for paying the deductible. If your deductible is $1,000 and the cost to repair the damage costs $1,000 or maybe a few hundred dollars more, you may not opt to file a claim.

Drivers are advised to contact their insurers to report the theft and determine the best course of action.

Auto Insurance, Health & Safety, Highway Safety

Expect a Memorial Day travel surge

Leave a comment

This Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer, many are feeling a renewed sense of hope as COVID-19 infection rates fall and vaccinated individuals are given the green light to travel.

Over 37 million Americans are planning trips of more than 50 miles from their homes this weekend, according to AAA, an increase of more than 60 percent from last year, but still 6 million fewer than 2019’s pre-pandemic travelers on the same weekend.

Drivers are reminded to exercise caution on the roads, as Memorial Day has some of the highest auto accident rates, with alcohol consumption as a major contributing factor.

Triple-I recently spoke with Forbes magazine about avoiding some of the other hazards of summer, including car theft, grill fires, and dog bite liability.

We hope that you take the extra precautions outlined in the Forbes article — as well as review your insurance coverage – and have a safe, healthy summer.