Great West vs Northland vs GEICO

Ben Curtis: Alright, I got a good one for ya. Well, I don't know if it's a good one. You tell me if it's a good one.

Raymond Moss: I'll be the judge of that.

Ben Curtis: Agent calls an underwriter. I got a trucking account you're gonna love. Underwriter says, Really? Agent

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: says, yep, 20 years in business. Underwriter says, Okay.

Raymond Moss: Hm. Hey, quality.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Agent says, no losses. Nice,

Raymond Moss: In twenty years?

Ben Curtis: says the underwriter. He says, experienced drivers. That's great. Excellent maintenance. Even better. He says they're profitable. The underwriter starts to believe. I didn't think this day would ever come. He says, even better, they're shopping because they're growing. The underwriter's like, amazing. I didn't think this day would ever come. Says, what are they growing into, by the way? Hazardous materials, he says. The underwriter sighs. I knew it was too good to be true.

Raymond Moss: But there is a market for it. That's what we remember.

Ben Curtis: There is, there is, that's right.

Raymond Moss: Welcome to the podcast that accompanies the DOT Analysis platform, where we discuss real time trends in the truck insurance market and explore answers to the questions you are not allowed to ask. I'm Ray.

Ben Curtis: And I'm Ben, and this is the Inside Lane. All right. So we're jumping into those questions you're not allowed to ask. We put that in our intro in every episode. But we don't necessarily in every episode frame it up as questions, although that's kind of implied in the background. So I think in this one we're gonna dig into some specific questions, the ones that we term obviously a tongue in cheek term that we phrase as the questions you're not allowed to ask. Of course, we're asking them, so we are. But talk a little bit about. Share your perspective on that. Why do we call them questions you're not allowed to ask?

Raymond Moss: Man, you'd have to hold me back 'cause I could go on for hours about this, but I won't. The reality is, is that there's been so much opaque unknown in this industry and in specifically in the markets that are represented in this industry. I've

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: been around long enough in in this world to have heard so many different questions and so many different hypotheses where it was an underwriter or an agent or a marketing person and they would, you know, say things like, If I only knew such and such, then I'd be able to make this decision. If I only knew, you know, that this was happening or the reality, or if I only knew that this speculation was actually accurate. I feel as though it's accurate. I can I can feel it in my gut. and it has to do usually with how a market is growing or shrinking or how their appetite is changing and shifting. If you could answer those questions, there are so many overarching strategic decisions that you could make. And the first time that we realized that you could not only ask those questions, but actually have answers to those questions, that's what the epiphany was. It was like, my gosh, I was never allowed to ask this before. And I can. So that's where that comes from.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and that's part of the tongue in cheek nature, right? Obviously there's no one telling you you can't ask that question. Anybody can ask the question. It's just

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: who asks a question that they know there's not an answer to?

Raymond Moss: Right. Yeah, if you can't know it, then what's the point?

Ben Curtis: Yeah, it kind of invalidates the question. Yeah. So the reason we're asking these questions is because we can finally parse through data and pull out insights and answers that were never before

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: available. And it is wild to see. It really is.

Raymond Moss: And I'll there's one more piece of that too, 'cause one of the things that I've I've had people, you know, especially with new customers who onboard, they say things like, you know, they look at, you know, an insurer's book of business and they get down to some really hard-hitting evidence of something in the data, and they they kind of look around and they're like, Is this private data? How

Ben Curtis: Right.

Raymond Moss: how do I know? Like am I allowed to see this? Like I've literally had people say those phrases to me and I have to explain how this works and how the data comes about and how we extract knowledge and conclusions out of it.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, really good point, because that's the other half of the you're not allowed to ask idea

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: and concept there, framing of that is that it does feel almost like data that you shouldn't be able to see. I mean, when we say we're opening

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: an insurance company's book of business, something about that just sounds unnat

Raymond Moss: Crazy.

Ben Curtis: yeah, unnatural, right? And

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: yet and yet it is public data. It takes powerful algorithms and math in order to build these views, but it is possible to see I I I like to use the term derivative data or derivative views, right? The underlying data

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: is public data, but yet the insights that are coming out and the an actual answers are not something that you can just go out and get.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: So an interesting concept, that idea of derivative data, but really powerful.

Raymond Moss: And it's applied industry knowledge. You know, you you you have to apply your industry knowledge to the data. And if you don't have that,

Ben Curtis: yeah, for sure.

Raymond Moss: you you can't possibly take that raw data, which arguably everyone has access to. But number one, the data's massive. Number two, you have to apply that industry knowledge. And number three, you have to merge all of those concepts together to have a meaningful picture come out and get the answer to the questions you're not allowed to ask.

Ben Curtis: Yep. Yeah. That is an important clarification. You know, there's some people that see the dashboard in DOT Analysis and think, well, first of all, they say, Is this just going to tell me what to do every day? No, it's not. No,

Raymond Moss: No.

Ben Curtis: it's going to give you clarity of of vision. that can sound discouraging. I wish it would just tell me what to do. But the reality is if it was telling you what to do, it'd be telling everybody else what to do, and everybody'd be doing the same thing.

Raymond Moss: And that would serve

Ben Curtis: And now

Raymond Moss: no one.

Ben Curtis: and no see exactly. There's no competitive advantage now. It's the classic if ever if everyone's special, then nobody's special. I I think they'll the incredi Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. What's that line from The Incredibles? If everyone was a super, no one's a super. That's what it is.

Ben Curtis: And so even though like your first response might be to think that way, the reality is that's not what you actually want. And so it should actually be reassuring to know. It's not going to just tell you exactly what to do. You're going to take your industry knowledge, your specific operation. But now instead of looking through this tiny little circle at what's in front of you, you're just opening up your entire windshield. You're looking across the entire spectrum. So now you're just, you're driving with full visibility. And you can make

Raymond Moss: Yep, absolutely.

Ben Curtis: so much better choices. Your periphery opens up immensely. Is that a good way to think about it?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it is a good way to think about it. All the things that you could feel on your periphery and you you would have bet that they were there. You can now prove that they were there. And thus in a couple of the things that you thought were and aren't, you go, I'm glad I have clarity on that. I always thought that was there, but it's not. You know, so clarity is a wonderful thing.

Ben Curtis: Alright, so the questions we're unpacking today, high level questions, the main ones that come from our customers all the time. And so that's why we're gonna unpack these. the first one we're gonna look at today. How does Northland compare with Great West? So

Raymond Moss: yeah, what a what a cool what a cool mask.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so if you want to get our dashboard pulled up here.

Raymond Moss: Yep. Here we go. You see that?

Ben Curtis: All right, so which one do you want to open first? Great West or Northland and then we'll look at the comparison.

Raymond Moss: No, that's a good question. How about Northland? We'll do that. All I got Northland pulled up here for those of you on Spotify and the audio version only on Apple Podcast. I'm on the Market Intelligence dashboard in DOT Analysis and I just opened up Northland as the insurer, which aggregates their multiple writing papers into a single view. So here we go.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so let's just do a quick overview of what their market picture looks like. And then we're gonna do that head to head against Great West. So read off our stats there for total policies.

Raymond Moss: All right, so Northland's got a total of let's say we're pushing nineteen thousand policies here. In the single unit world, they're pushing thirteen. we'll call it twelve thousand seven hundred. Non fleet, they got fifty three hundred approximately, and fleets they've got call it six hundred and fifty. So

Ben Curtis: Okay.

Raymond Moss: they're growing overall, which is really cool. But they're they're down in the fleet segment, I'll note.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so just list off those percentages.

Raymond Moss: So up overall by seven percent in the last year, because I got my time filter set before now compared to the year ago. So up overall by seven percent. Single units are up six percent. Nonfleet, they're doing they're doing handily, you know, they're doing good in that. They are up in non fleet by twelve percent year over year. And in fleet, they're actually down by seven percent. So it's interesting because the increase in the number of filings for single unit and for non fleet is kind of masking the decrease in fleet that we're seeing in that overall net percentage of seven percent. So it's fascinating to be able to see that.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, well and and even though we're not asking that as a specific question, that really brings it up. That is one of the points of being able to ask or the questions you shouldn't you're not allowed to ask.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: That's an example of it is I wanna understand how Northland's doing, not just overall, I wanna understand within these specific segments because that brings so much more clarity to the picture. So I

Raymond Moss: Yeah, and you can distort metrics so dramatically if you just say, Hey, how many policies do they write this year versus last year? Well if you just did that, you'd you'd get

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: it you'd draw entirely different conclusions and you would probably draw wrong conclusions without a doubt by making

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: the mistake.

Ben Curtis: All right. So can we can we set up our analysis this way, Ray? Can we actually open a second tab, Market Intelligence

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: tab, and let's just put Great West up because what I don't want to do is lose the comparison by looking at

Raymond Moss: Yeah, let's do that.

Ben Curtis: all of Northwest and then going So let's just go through each component of their book and do it side by side.

Raymond Moss: All right, so I got Great West open here. I got the all the rest of the filters the same. I'm looking at now compared to the year ago. And yeah, this is a totally different picture. So Great West, we're pushing we'll we'll say thirty-eight thousand five hundred. We'll round it a little bit. So the

Ben Curtis: Yep. So about double the book of business by by policy count.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, by policy count. Yep. And they are down five percent overall. So that's definitely different than Northland. So single unit is they're at about twenty one thousand policies. That's down by four percent. Their non fleet is at call it fourteen and a half thousand, so fourteen thousand five hundred, that's down by six percent. And fleet is at twenty seven hundred approximately, and that's down by three percent from a year ago. That is that is the most interesting to me, is that fleet business, twenty seven hundred, if I go back to Northland, look how many more fleets Great West has, or I should say in this case, look how many less fleets Northland has. I wonder if people really realize that. I don't I don't know. I don't I that doesn't always I don't always connect with that every day when I'm thinking about Northland versus Great West.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so we'll unpack that in a second for sure because that is a distinct difference.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. All right, where do you want to go next?

Ben Curtis: All right, well just let's just hit let's just go across the screen here and hit renewal rate and relationship duration, just so we have that as a comparative as well. They're both solid for sure.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, so I'll let me just go through that real quick here. Great West renewal rate, yeah, both of solid insurers on their renewals, above the market average. Great West Renewal on their first year, across the board averaging seventy percent first year, seventy-three percent second year, seventy-six percent the third year, and eighty-two percent the fourth year. That's really strong. That's great. And Great

Ben Curtis: Yeah, it is.

Raymond Moss: West does great. So good products, right? Here's Northland. Northland, seventy-one percent renewal rate on the first year. seventy-four percent on the second year, 75% on the third, and 76% on the fourth. So definitely solid, definitely fantastic to be able to make those two different comparisons. Great West, I'd say overall, edges out Northland a bit on that current renewal rate. It's a little bit higher with Great West, especially when you get to that longer end of the relationship on that fourth renewal. I'd say eighty two percent is is significantly better than Northland's seventy six percent. So for what it's worth, I I find that pretty fascinating there.

Ben Curtis: Alright, so I don't want to take the time to go through all of the cargo types, but just looking at cargo types and radius, obviously general freight is that largest category. I see a good number of of other things there. I looked at this ahead of time. You can see if there's anything that stands out to you. To me, they look fairly comparable as far as cargo and radius.

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: No no specific things that stand out as like huge appetite differences there.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, and and we are looking really broad right now. I mean, I have the single units in there. Sometimes what

Ben Curtis: Right.

Raymond Moss: I try to do is remove those single units 'cause there's new authorities in there and such small operations, it distorts the

Ben Curtis: Right.

Raymond Moss: picture sometimes. But yeah, not a lot to pull out until we zoom in, I'd say, at this point.

Ben Curtis: All right. So just scroll down there and let's just double check the safety. I think they're both writing really clean business as well.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, so I'm on Northland right now. I got a lot of green ISS. I have a tiny bit of yellow and I have a tiny bit of red. I got a lot of insufficient where it's not calculatable because we have a lot of single units in there. So that's Northland. Let's look at Great West a second. Yeah. Very similar story. Really

Ben Curtis: Almost identical. Yep.

Raymond Moss: good underwriting appetites for clean quality motor carriers. And I'd say that tracks with what a lot of people's gut probably feels, which is Great West. Northland, they write quality business. They do good underwriting. Absolutely.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so now let's look at the head to head because that's what we have in our won and lost business chart at the bottom of the screen there. So how are they doing head to head against Great West? We're looking overall book again. Well, I guess you're on Great West screen, so same thing. Who what what are they doing head to head against Northland?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that gets so interesting. I got both sides of the ledger here. Great West took four hundred and twenty eight policies from Northland. Great West lost, though, eight hundred and sixty policies to Northland. that's kind of lopsided.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, Northland's doubling up on Great West right now.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's really that's really interesting. Now the next question, I l this is what happens. I always wonder, are those fleets? Is that non fleet? Is that single unit? 'Cause that paints a whole different picture. So I don't know if you want me to go there, but that's where my brain naturally goes.

Ben Curtis: But Ray, but Ray, I'm not allowed to ask that question.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's right.

Ben Curtis: All right, so let's do it. Turn on fleets, go to the filter and turn on fleets. Let's see because we saw Great West has a lot more fleet book than Northland

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: does. So what's the head to head on fleets?

Raymond Moss: All right, so I'm looking at Great West. I just set my filter to just look at fleets. I can see that Great West took 28 fleets from Northland, and Great West lost 30 fleets to Northland. So yeah,

Ben Curtis: So basically dead even in the fleet market.

Raymond Moss: that's interesting. That see, knowing the questions to ask, asking the questions and having the tool there to be able to answer it, that changes my perspective of what their

Ben Curtis: Okay.

Raymond Moss: head to head matchup is.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. All right. So we just did that on on fleet. Let's switch because we saw that Northland is really strong in non- fleet. So let's keep the single unit out, but just look at non-fleet and then see what that head to head looks like.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's yeah, that's that's a great one to ask. So I'm looking at Great West, two to five and six to nine. So I I kept out the single units, I kept out the fleets, ten or more, and I'm just looking between two and nine trucks. Great West took a hundred and thirty-eight of those from Northland over the past year. And Great West

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: lost three hundred and nineteen of those. So there you go. Great West is

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: They're losing to Northland in that nonfleet business. And

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: both of them, as we saw a minute ago, have very similar underwriting appetites. So

Ben Curtis: So we always be careful what this platform doesn't tell us is the why.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. yeah. Absolutely. And sometimes I gotta

Ben Curtis: Right. So

Raymond Moss: be I gotta be careful to to not jump to those conclusions too early.

Ben Curtis: Or to not assume the why, right? To leave yeah, I gotta

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Assuming is dangerous. I've learned that.

Ben Curtis: l leave open to the range of possibilities that's there. But all things being equal, if appetite is equal, if the time frame is is equal, if the motor carrier segment is equal, and Northland is tripling up on Great West in in taking that nonfleet business, I don't know. My immediate hypothesis would be they've probably got a better or cheaper offering.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. It it may be price. Then I would jump into at the state level 'cause I I love looking at this map and being able to see, all right, what does that mean geographically?

Ben Curtis: All right. Well, I don't we don't have time to go through all 50 states right now. That'd be a fantastic thing to dig into in detail later or jump into that on your own. I do want to try one thing though. Let's just adjust our date range here. Let's just stay in the non-fleet, for example. Let's go to our date range though and just look at six months just to see if that picture changes from a year ago. Let's is that trending or not?

Raymond Moss: Alright, so you want me to say now versus six months ago? All right, so I'm on Great West Book. I'm saying now versus six.

Ben Curtis: 'Cause we were we were essentially a three to one ratio, Northland to Great West. So now

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Yep.

Ben Curtis: let's see what that looks like if that ratio is holding in the last six months.

Raymond Moss: Alright, so now versus six months ago in the two to nine trucks, that type of unit count, I can see that Great West took fifty four of those away from Northland. And Great West lost a hundred and thirty six. There you go. That's

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: holding.

Ben Curtis: It is holding. Yeah. Interesting.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it really is.

Ben Curtis: Okay. Tons more we could dig into there, but that's a that's a really fascinating view at what's happening head to head against two of the biggest and most talked about players in the market right now.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, absolutely. That's fun. Yeah, what what

Ben Curtis: Okay.

Raymond Moss: else?

Ben Curtis: All right, next question. Everyone's wanting to know GEICO. What's happening there? So here's the broad question we want to unpack. What impact is GEICO having on the truck insurance market? And how are they doing? It was a huge splash

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: a couple years ago when they started to enter the market. Everybody knew that they were sucking up a lot of business, but Not a ton of clarity, at least from what we've been hearing, on exactly what that looks like and what that means. So w why don't we open open GEICO's book and see what's happening with GEICO?

Raymond Moss: All right, I cleared out my filters. I'm on Market Intelligence. I'm gonna throw in GEICO here. I'm gonna use the logical insurer, because they do write on more than one paper.

Ben Curtis: Uh-huh.

Raymond Moss: And here we go. I am looking at GEICO's book now across the country. And yeah, if I would have looked at this two ish two plus years ago, I'd be at zero essentially. But today I stand at twenty six thousand policies. That's up by forty six percent overall.

Ben Curtis: Year over year.

Raymond Moss: I'm year over year, yep, because I'm looking at now versus a year ago. And single units, I'm at just about eighteen thousand, seventeen thousand eight hundred and eighty two. That's up fifty eight percent year over year. Nonfleet, I'm looking at, you know, just about eight thousand policies. And fleets, I'm looking at, you know, call it call it six hundred. It's a little less than that. And

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: that's down. So yeah, they are right in business. Absolutely.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So looking at the bar graph next to that though really highlights the amount of their book that is five units or less. That's

Raymond Moss: yeah.

Ben Curtis: almost their entire book.

Raymond Moss: Basically everything they do is five units or less. Absolutely.

Ben Curtis: Now, I'm sure that a lot of agents who are in this space know that anecdotally, know that through experience, that they're not placing fleets with GEICO. But if all

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: you're hearing is the noise of what's happening in the industry and how much attention they're garnering, it might that might not be as clear. It doesn't necessarily match the amount of noise that exists out there.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, yeah, that is a good way to say it.

Ben Curtis: The they are so weighted on that low unit end of the spectrum. Now, a couple years ago when this started happening, we were very interested to see do they know what they're doing? Are they going to be able to hold on to any of this business? So it is really interesting when we look at that renewal rate. Now we really only have about two meaningful years worth of data there, because that's really the only time period where they've had meaningful number of policies.

Raymond Moss: Right. I'd say and because those policies, because generally everyone knows that these policies run year on year, you know, I'd say we have really solid first renewal data. I wouldn't say the second renewal is really as solid as as I'm comfortable, you know, drawing c as much conclusion out of as that first one. But I will note both are tracking in the positive same direction. So first renewal, look at that. fifty three percent above the market average of forty nine. Wow.

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: I did not expect that. I will admit when GEICO came out of the gate, I did not expect him to have a solid first renewal rate like that and hold the business.

Ben Curtis: Well, Ray, we can actually validate or look at how much data went through that second renewal. If we adjust our time filter

Raymond Moss: yeah.

Ben Curtis: to two years ago, as of two years ago, that tells us how much business they had on their books there. And we can see in our relationship duration how much of that was new business. So let's look at two years ago.

Raymond Moss: Alright, so I'm on now, I'm going to two years ago. yeah, see, that's not that much. That's made it to that second renewal compared to what they have in their book. So yeah, I I'd say that's

Ben Curtis: But it i but it is it is twelve hundred policies. And you can see it from the relationship

Raymond Moss: It's tw

Ben Curtis: duration, almost all of that is new business. So that was new business two years ago, which means that is primarily the group of policies that went through that second renewal. So yeah, we

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: got twelve twelve hundred policies that converted at what was that percentage there?

Raymond Moss: Sixty three percent on that second renewal. That's great. And hey, I like it and it's trending where I want to go. I'm just a I I just I like being cautious and I like to prove things out a little bit longer until I really

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: start relying on it. Because their first renewal, hey, I'm gonna take that fifty three percent, you know, I'm gonna trust that now. I'm gonna wait to trust what they do on the second renewals and see how they perform there until we have more than about twelve hundred policies that went through their second renewal. 'Cause they got a pretty big book, twenty six thousand policies on their books now, approximately.

Ben Curtis: Yep. Okay, so let's keep going here with the GEICO analysis. We said what impact are they having on the market? So it looks like they are dramatically impacting the one to five unit market.

Raymond Moss: Yes.

Ben Curtis: relatively minimal or essentially no impact on the rest of the market. So let's go see where that business is coming from. Who who are they taking those policies from?

Raymond Moss: Alright, I'm gonna scroll to the bottom here and yeah, here we go. As I would have expected and in my gut, of course, Progressive. They're taking a lot from Progressive. Interestingly enough, here though, look at number two. Look who they're taking their second most amount of business from Great West.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Now we are looking just over the last year. If we open a year compared to two years ago, will that actually show us two years worth of taking business?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, let's do that. Let's look at GEICO's two year taken. There you go, look at that. It's still Progressive at the the top of the

Ben Curtis: Yeah, how how many policies from Progressive?

Raymond Moss: eighteen thousand. That is a crazy amount. They basically if they have twenty six thousand policies now and they took eighteen thousand of them from Progressive, that's basically just a swapping out for Progressive's book. Great West though, look at that. Twelve hundred.

Ben Curtis: Which w which we have had some a haven we have had some agents telling us

Raymond Moss: yeah.

Ben Curtis: that they write a lot with Progressive and they are really having a hard time right now.

Raymond Moss: I I had a customer a couple months ago call me and was basically giving me he was the principal of a of a particular agency down south and he was giving me the story of what's been happening with his book and the shift that's happening in the market and how much of a visceral reality that was for him. It was moving from Progressive to GEICO and was presenting some unique challenges.

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Absolutely.

Ben Curtis: So somebody who had an experience like that might say, Well, I don't need a platform like this to see that. I already know that's the case. And to some extent that's true. But being able to understand exactly what that looks like and exactly where the risk lies. And by risk I mean what what impact it's going to have on your business, this is really clarifying. This is that opening up the periphery of your view to understand

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: what's really happening. So I want to do a couple other things here to point out, right? So can we go to the filters? Let's just go back to now compared to a year ago. Just get

Raymond Moss: All right.

Ben Curtis: our default view in there for GEICO. All right. Go to the map, hover over the map so that the numbers show up on the map. So not only are we saying that GEICO is impactful in one to five units, look at the map and tell me where GEICO matters geographically.

Raymond Moss: yes. See, this is this is incredibly enlightening to be able to see this because I would have assumed if without having access to this that they'd be taking up a lot of that business that's in California. Because everyone not everyone, a lot of people know about what happened in California. What was that, like a year and a half ago, two years ago, with the whole switch from independent contractor to be having your own authority? I would have thought they'd be eating up that business. Look at that. They are not. They're a nothing burger in California.

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: They got a couple policies there, probably because people moved there from across the state line, and who knows what's going to happen with those. They are big in Texas, they are big in Illinois, they are big in Indiana, they are big in Ohio, they are big in Florida, they are big in South Carolina. There's a couple other states out there as well. I didn't recognize.

Ben Curtis: But those those the states you just listed are the only states where they have more than a thousand policies.

Raymond Moss: Right, right.

Ben Curtis: And numerous states that they have essentially not eleven policies or

Raymond Moss: Right. Montana's got ten policies. I mean, does that mean they're a player in the state? I don't know. It's a big state geographically, but there's not a lot of people there. But does that mean I there you go. Use your situational awareness if you're an agency or you're an insurer that's focused on Montana, then you can draw some really good conclusions there.

Ben Curtis: All right, so one of the things we love to do in this tool is follow threads. So I here's a thread that I wanna follow, a thread I wanna pull on and see where it leads, all right.

Raymond Moss: All right.

Ben Curtis: They are obviously the major player in Texas, or their book is primarily located in Texas, right?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's a huge percentage overall of where their book is located.

Ben Curtis: right, over five thousand of their policies are in Texas. That's their main market. So what I want to do is understand what is their what is the landscape, the insurance landscape look like in Texas. So now I want to take this view where we're not just looking through the lens of GEICO, because we already looked at who they're winning and losing business from overall. Now I want to just say, let's understand what the insurance landscape looks like in Texas. So can we actually switch over or open in a new tab, the Market Explorer window?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Curtis: And let's just pull up all of the motor carriers with an auto liability filing in Texas.

Raymond Moss: All right, so I'm gonna do show only in Texas in Market Explorer for active DOTs who have auto liability and I'm looking at thirty two call it thirty three thousand motor carriers. That's a decent amount.

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm. All right. So the graph on the right hand side there is going to give us the weighting by insurance companies. So here's what I want to see is who's actually competing in Texas. And we've got Progressive is number one on the list, not surprising. GEICO, who we know is taking a lot of Progressive's books, so that basically a lot of that is probably Progressive business there. Who are the next few in that list?

Raymond Moss: So I got well, I didn't I didn't recognize I didn't expect this, but I got Clear Blue, and then I have Great West, and then I have Northland, Canal, Cimarron, Century, and then the list of course keeps going down. But

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Berkeley

Ben Curtis: Okay, so here's what I wanted to point out to you, and I'm glad that you said that you weren't expecting this. This is why pulling threads is so fascinating. The number

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: three player in that key market is Clear Blue. So I never would have known to look at that without seeing that here and understanding that they're one of the key players in one of the key markets. So now let's I I'm curious, go back to Market Explorer or Market Intelligence and look at what Clear Blue is doing.

Raymond Moss: I'm going to

Ben Curtis: Cause all just before we open up the page to set the context, we looked at some key players, Progressive or not Progressive, but Great West, Northland, GEICO. GEICO is growing a lot. The other ones relatively flat, not huge changes. I want to see what Clear Blue is doing. So go ahead and open up Clear Blue.

Raymond Moss: Alright, I got Clear Blue compared now versus a year ago. They're up. Wow, that's cool. Forty seven hundred policies. That's up a hundred and seventeen percent from a year ago. I did not know this was happening.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, massive growth. So go to the map and see where their growth is.

Raymond Moss: yeah, look at that. They are up massive in Texas. Now talk about pulling threads. The next thing that comes to mind is who do they take that from? In Texas specifically. Can I do that? Do you mind?

Ben Curtis: Yeah, yeah.

Raymond Moss: I'm gonna do all I'm in all states right now, but I I just want to know these stats for Texas. So I'm gonna pick just Texas, scroll back down. And who did Clear Blue take that from? Well, it's not GEICO. They're they're further down in the list. I got that they took sixty three policies from GEICO, so they're in there. But accredited and Progressive. And something I'd never seen before, Agricultural Worker Mutual Auto Insurance Co. a hundred of So look at that, they're a growing player in Texas for sure, with three thousand policies in Texas. That's almost at the size of

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so

Raymond Moss: GEICO.

Ben Curtis: yeah. So a very key player to be aware of. And I know I've talked to a few agents in Texas who are aware of Clear Blue and are starting to work with them, but they are obviously a significant player in the market right now, making a huge splash and a big difference, Texas being the second largest state of total policies that exist, just just behind California.

Raymond Moss: For those five or less fleet

Ben Curtis: So also interesting to see Clear Blue is not just competing in the one to five. They actually have a decent number of policies, a per percentage of their book anyways, that is it

Raymond Moss: yeah, they do. I didn't even realize that.

Ben Curtis: now mostly just into small fleet, doesn't look like they have many large fleets, but they're but their non fleet, larger non fleet and smaller fleet, they actually have a decent footprint there.

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: So that'll be a very interesting development to

Raymond Moss: That'll be

Ben Curtis: watch.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it'll be fun to track and see how that happen see how that develops over time. Very cool.

Ben Curtis: But if you're a key player or or you got doing a lot of business in Texas, Clear Blue is definitely somebody you're gonna want to be aware of and keep an eye on.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, for a hundred different reasons.

Ben Curtis: Yep. All right. I got one other thing I want to look at on Market Intelligence. So Texas is the second largest state for policies behind California. So we go to or back to Market Explorer. I wanna just wanna take a look at California and see what's happening in California.

Raymond Moss: Alright, so I'm back on market, I'm back on Market Explorer. I had Texas open. I'm gonna get rid of that. I'm gonna go and select just California here. So show only California on those active DOTs with an auto liability filing. And Progressive is the largest. And again, I'm not I don't live in California and I don't think about California a lot. So this is a surprise to me. Look at that. Second largest player in California, Great West.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Isn't it interesting to see how different that list is from Texas to California? You'd think

Raymond Moss: GEICO's nowhere to be found. Look at that. Clear

Ben Curtis: Right.

Raymond Moss: blue's not if I s I wonder if I s I wonder how far down I have to scroll before I see Clear Blue. maybe they don't even do anything and okay, here we go. They do something, but look at that. Almost nothing. Two hundred and seventy one policies in a large state like California. Wait on the list.

Ben Curtis: So isn't it interesting to see even within so in the two largest markets by total policy count, how different the insurance weighting is by company?

Raymond Moss: Right. It's really good to know that because I talk to people that are that are in different regions of the country, right? And everyone has geographic realities about their business, whether the they're the insurer side of the game or they're the agency side of the game. And if you are in that, you know, southwest region of the country and you've got clients, you got customers that are in California and in Texas, you have to put on a totally different strategy. You have to put on a totally different hat if you're going to understand the market realities of those two places. Absolutely. Just it shows that with without a doubt, good to have that knowledge.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. All right. So one other thing that I want to do, can you add to California? Let's just add the selector of red ISS or ISS inspect as a filter. Because I want to

Raymond Moss: sure. All right, so I'm gonna add add filter.

Ben Curtis: point out as well or look at how significant the insurance company waiting is when we add a variable like that and how much that shuffles the deck.

Raymond Moss: yeah, that shuffled a deck a lot. So I'm in Market Explorer looking at just California active DOTs with an auto liability filing, red ISS, and the top of the list, South Lake, then universal, then Progressive, then here we go, MS Transverse, got an InsurTech in there. Accredited National Transportation Insurance benchmark, night, and then the list goes on and on.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So fascinating to be able to do that as well. Not just see who's a player in a certain in a certain state or region, but to see how that motor carrier profile. I mean that's in we're understanding and unpacking what appetite actually looks like by specific

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: characteristic. So, I mean we could we could get lost in this for days doing this, explore by cargo types and exploring by all all all other things, but

Raymond Moss: I had a I had a customer I had a customer call me and say he called me just to say this. He said he said, Ray, it's like I'm in Candyland every single day because he was just traipsing through all of the knowledge that's in DOT Analysis and it is kinda like that. You're pulling threads, it's like you're going through the Candyland board and you're just finding great stuff.

Ben Curtis: Okay, should we do one more fun one though? Let clear clear ISS. We just added a new filter here recently to Market Explorer. We can now

Raymond Moss: You mean to stay in California?

Ben Curtis: sure. We can now filter though by operation. So let's pick a fun operation and

Raymond Moss: yeah, this is so fun.

Ben Curtis: just see, just see who's doing that. What operation type do you want to look at?

Raymond Moss: Before I before I click on that and before we do it, let me give you my 30-second take on this because I'm s I love this. And here's why. It's because everyone that's in the industry knows there's a difference between cargo and operation. But of course, what does the government do? Well, they blur the lines on that reality. So they don't quite understand the difference between your operation type and your cargo. And so often those concepts are mixed, but pulling out the difference between cargo and operation type. is a beautiful thing because they appear similar at first glance, but they are not. So

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So let's look at the list of operation types we have and then explain what you mean by that.

Raymond Moss: well, I'm gonna I'm actually gonna start here. I'm gonna go to the cargo and I'm gonna go to the cargo as reported by the motor carrier, which everyone knows is on the MCS-150. Take a look at this. I can see on here liquid and gas. Right. But you know what? That doesn't speak to? That doesn't speak to I'm gonna go to operation now. That doesn't speak to the fact that you could be a tanker liquids operation or a tanker dry bulk operation, you take cargo and the you mix in the concept of the operation and it just gets fuzzy. But it's wonderful when you can differentiate between a cargo type and an operation type, because they're definitely different.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so you want to open one of those? Let's just let's just look at Tanker Liquids, for example, or a different one you want there and see who's writing that.

Raymond Moss: Sure, that let's do that one. Let's Tanker Liquids. And we'll do show only. I'm in California here. And let's see who's writing that in California. look at that. Again, wouldn't have expected it, but there we go. Old Republic. Then Concert Group, then Great West, Arch Progressive, Berkeley, Guide One.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So just really interesting to be able to look at how specific characteristics like that, whether it's cargo, whether it's fleet size or operation type, how that adjusts the insurance weighting and therefore is a reflection of the the appetite in that in that region.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Absolutely great to be able to see that.

Ben Curtis: Okay, well, I think that wraps up the time that we have for today. Those have been some fun questions to explore, though. Keep letting us know what you're thinking, what you're interested in, so that we know what hard hitting questions we can unpack in the next episode. And, you know, consistently we get from our clients who are looking at these dashboards, but are still so heads down just doing their job, pursuing their business, whether it's going after business as an agent. Whether it's doing underwriting and still want to know, hey, can you go through and do some of the work of finding the interesting stories that are happening and bring to light

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: the key things that I need to be aware of in the market? And so that's our desire. That's what we're trying to do here is

Raymond Moss: Yeah, so for all those folks who, you know, have been have been asking these types of questions and who are combing through some of this on their own and then they reach out to us and they say, Well, what about this and what about that? That's the reason that we love doing this on the podcast and answering some of these questions because I know that if some of you guys are asking these and have taken the time to reach out and ask specific questions, I know that there's other people that just don't have the time. Because like you said, Ben, people are heads down, they're running hard, they're they're working diligently, and Being able to provide some of this information at such an easy accessible level is is great great to be able to do for for our customers. And we love doing that. All right. Well you guys have a fantastic rest of your day. We'll see you next time.