3 Incident Management Best Practices for Your Fleet

Many fleets find themselves asking the same question: “Why are our insurance rates going up even though our performance is good?”

The answer is complicated. No one thing is causing rates to rise. It’s a multitude of factors, just like it is for your personal vehicle insurance or your health insurance.

Some of these elements are out of your control, but not all of them are. It is possible to get flat or single-digit insurance renewals.

“Best-in-class operators are going to get best-in-class pricing — across the board,” says Tim Brewster, VP for loss control, claims operations, and claims business analysis at National Interstate. So, what can motor carriers do to get best-in-class pricing?

Incident management is one area where many motor carriers can make an impact on their insurance rates by improving their processes, triaging faster and managing risk.

Why Motor Carrier Insurance Is Going Up

There are many reasons insurance is going up for motor carriers, including so-called social inflation, our litigious society, rising medical costs and increasing vehicle replacement and repair values.

Social inflation and our litigious society go hand in hand. Social inflation refers to the additional costs that come from societal and legal changes, such as the fact that there are more lawsuits, often paid for by third parties.

It’s no secret medical costs are going up as well. There are more traumatic brain injuries and soft tissue injury claims than there have been in the past, in addition to more advanced medical procedures, which are costlier.

Vehicle and repair costs are more expensive than ever, too. There are more total losses than ever due to aging vehicles. Add to that increasing technician wages, more expensive parts due to tariff-related uncertainty and vehicles that are more difficult to repair because of technology, and it’s a recipe for expensive claims.

Incident Management Best Practices

We’ve identified several areas where motor carriers can learn to harness the factors within their control to prevent or slow rising insurance costs. Here’s a look at each of them.

Fast & Mobile Triage

Your insurance company wants to know about losses immediately to establish rapport with the claimant and potentially settle the claim before an attorney gets involved and the claim amount skyrockets.

Best practices for fast and mobile triage include:

Controlling the narrative: Ensure the facts of loss make it to the insurance company quickly; otherwise, you’ll risk inaccurate information, a delayed start to the investigation and the claimant obtaining legal representation, which could result in much higher claim amounts and a lengthy process.
Making it easy to collect data and submit claims: Accidents don’t always happen while you’re sitting at your desktop computer. You need the ability to enter “first notice of loss” data into a structured form on your mobile device 24/7. Even better if it integrates with your existing systems to pull in known data and allows you to submit a claim with one click.

Prioritized Process Management

When a loss happens, stress is high. It’s easy to skip steps and overlook important information, so you need a formal process you can easily execute to ensure you collect necessary data from the scene. Structure and consistency are key.

To ensure your incident management process is locked in, you need:

Consistent data collection: Make sure no one forgets to capture or upload vital details, such as other vehicle information, all in a centralized system. Large files like photos and videos are a key part of your data collection. Ensure you have unlimited storage and easy sharing capabilities.
Prioritized task management: It’s best to start with your highest severity incidents and work your way down — don’t just go in chronological order.
Documentation management: Ensure you can prove you’ve done your due diligence when it comes to accident reviews, coaching, event-based training and/or discipline.

Risk Prevention & Cost Reduction

It’s important to respond appropriately when accidents happen, but it’s more important to help prevent them from happening in the first place. Best-in-class carriers centralize all their loss data and analyze it to reduce the likelihood of future incidents and losses.

To mitigate risks and reduce claims and costs, you want:

A dashboard that prioritizes incidents based on severity: Your most severe cases to address should be apparent at a glance so you know where to target your attention.
Trend spotting ability: In a centralized system, the data will inform you where to focus prevention campaigns, in terms of accident types, locations, driver tenure or other categories.

Scott Rea
Avatar Management Services
https://www.avatarfleet.com