Many preferred US auto insurance carriers are expanding into new geographies and channels. This has not gone well. Most experienced much higher loss ratios than they projected. Why?
We believe this is because new market and channel entry attracts a very different type of customer than carriers’ are used to dealing with. These customers are by definition ‘new’, more prone to lie about key rating factors, more likely to file questionable claims and more likely to quit paying after they’ve gotten their insurance card and/or claim check. In short, they behave more like non-standard customers than preferred.
To illustrate just how big a problem this is for the industry, let’s take two examples of our work with major preferred carriers: Billing fraud and Pre-existing Damage fraud