Providers & Administrators, 1st Qtr 2019

18 P A 1ST QTR 2019 Octobers P A Leadership Summit included The Inside Scoop a panel session staffed by leading executives and focused on the future of protection products including how where and when they are sold At the 2018 P A Leadership Summit held Oct 9 10 in Orlando Fla a panel of experts convened to offer The Inside Scoop on the opportunities and challenges they faced throughout the year Moderator Kristen Gruber president of Dealers Assurance Company was joined by Arden Hetland president of American Financial Automotive Services Dave Duncan president of Safe Guard Products International and Stan Starnes COO of Nobilis Group The Elephant in the Room The first and most pressing topic the panel tackled was GAP The product has been part of at least one PALS discussion panel for three years in a row and for good reason Mounting losses are threatening the viability of a critical F I product type Hetland said the string of natural disasters that hit the U S in the 12 months leading up to the event had presented yet another threat to GAP If the industry is going to continue to sell it he said it has to figure out how to protect insurers We think theres a very good opportunity to rate GAP basically the way you rate a service contract to control some of those losses Duncan noted that despite the challenges Safe Guards GAP penetration rates have never been higher If you go against all care delivered its 30 to 40 If you go against finance deals its better than 50 and in some stores it could be as high as 70 to 75 of true retail finance deals He added that his company is seeing a higher percentage of collisions that result in a total loss In his experience four out of every seven collisions now results in a replacement vehicle in the past two out of seven was the standard And when advanced systems are present even if its not a total loss the cost to repair is greatly enhanced The insurance companies have gotten very savvy at undercutting the claims for the customer which drives up the severity for the GAP company especially when they know GAP is on the loan Duncan said Typically the first question they ask a customer is Hey did you buy GAP Yes I did And I think it puts something in motion on the insurance company side to lower that appraisal From Industry Leaders STRAIGHT TALK By Tariq Kamal @ Adobe Stock alphaspirit