Total Market Rundown

Ben Curtis: I got a question for you first. Why did the logistics coordinator drink prune juice?

Raymond Moss: Why did the logistics coordinator drink prune juice? I have no idea.

Ben Curtis: Because he wanted to eliminate his backlog. But you do realize that "eliminate" is a euphemism, right?

Raymond Moss: Well, you do know my very first career in life. Many people don't know this about me. I think you know this, but remember,

Ben Curtis: I do.

Raymond Moss: I went to school to be an RN. I went

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: All the way through school to be a registered nurse, and I was an RN for nine months in the real world. So believe me, I am familiar. Yes, I am.

Ben Curtis: You are familiar with the elimination euphemism.

Raymond Moss: That is right.

Ben Curtis: Right, well, we're on our tenth episode, Ray. This is gonna wrap up our first season here and then probably only be about a month or so before we launch into our fall season. But wrapping up this first season of the Inside Lane podcast, wanted to do a just a general look at the overall market, the state of the market, key things that are happening, and really we're gonna hit a lot of insurers here. Look at what's happening and what's notable within really all of the main insurers and even some of the not as common names that are really making a big splash in the market right now. So want to run through that on today's episode. We got a lot of ground to cover. So buckle up, hang on to your hats,

Raymond Moss: Yeah, I'm excited.

Ben Curtis: Whatever you want to say.

Raymond Moss: This'll be fun because I am so oftentimes in the nitty gritty of like our product development and UI design and talking to users and developers and people about that that it'll be fun to jump into these market realities because yeah, should be sweet.

Ben Curtis: We'll walk through this in a way where you might get to be surprised by a few things, and I'll see what your reaction is to some of these market developments that

Raymond Moss: Wait.

Ben Curtis: Surprised me when I went to look for it. So

Raymond Moss: You know, it's interesting. I am constantly surprised. We jump into, you know, a conversation for consulting or, you know, even just a group of users that we're doing some training on. And there are so many things in the market to be surprised by that I love finding those actionable things. So this should this will be fun to take that broad overview and then, you know, double click down in on some of those ideas.

Ben Curtis: If everything's

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Fully predictable, what do you do with that? There's no opportunity in a fully predictable world. But when you're surprised

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: When something unexpected pops out, now

Raymond Moss: And here's the thing. Any market

Ben Curtis: Sorry, eliminate the backlog and something unexpected pops out.

Raymond Moss: My gosh.

Ben Curtis: Whew, okay. Hard reset.

Raymond Moss: Lest we get

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Completely and totally utterly derailed beyond all shadow of possible reconstructive doubt,

Ben Curtis: Recovery. Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Let's reel it back in.

Ben Curtis: Why don't you read our intro and then we'll get right into the market?

Raymond Moss: All right, 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 that you are not allowed to ask. I'm Ray.

Ben Curtis: And I'm Ben, and this is the Inside Lane. I was talking to a friend in the industry the other day and having the conversation about how much need there is for there to be a town square of conversation, open conversation around what's actually happening in the market. You know, there's not a

Raymond Moss: Yeah. I totally agree.

Ben Curtis: Lot of people out there who are starting and creating conversations that are truly open conversations. I know there's pockets of conversations happening.

Raymond Moss: Well, and a lot of times that happens in a single organization and then another conversation

Ben Curtis: Right.

Raymond Moss: In a single organization, but that lacks

Ben Curtis: That's what I mean by pockets.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that lacks the full breadth of the whole market, you know, coming together to share insight.

Ben Curtis: And it feels like that's because there isn't really hasn't been historically a good source of truth or a way to actually see market realities that are happening to be able to have a conversation around. And

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: That's what's really amazing and groundbreaking about what we're doing on the DOT Analysis platform, what we're looking at and the stories that we're unpacking there.

Raymond Moss: Well, let me just add a little bit of color to that concept, 'cause it's very true. It used to be, and in organizations that don't quite realize what's available now, is that it used to be that you'd come up with this really interesting insight and you would want to hold it really close to the vest because you didn't want anyone else to know that specific insight because you were gonna leverage that, right? Well, everything changes when you can see the scoreboard, so to speak. Across the market. And that's a lot of what's happening.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and I think that it isn't something that people should be afraid of. I think that it is a

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: It is one of those scenarios where a rising tide lifts all boats. Like it really makes

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: The playing field better for everybody because the opportunities,

Raymond Moss: Transparency.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and the opportunities that creates are just that much more meaningful and significant.

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Okay. So here's what I want to do, Ray. Why don't you pull up the Market Intelligence dashboard and let's just look at the market overall. And then what I want to do is unpack we have to do this. Unpack single unit versus non fleet versus fleet.

Raymond Moss: Okay, yeah. Well so what you're saying in other words is put it into the different segments that are logically grouped together because they're treated

Ben Curtis: Yeah, we

Raymond Moss: Very differently by everyone in the market.

Ben Curtis: And not only are they treated differently, but the market movers and the things that are happening in with those within those segments are so unique and different, totally gets

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Lost if you just paint the broad brush of what's happening in the market overall. So we'll do a quick look at the market overall, but then we've got to break down those segments and see there's as I dug into this, there are some amazing and very unexpected things happening. And I wanna bring that to light and be able to talk about it here. All right.

Raymond Moss: Cool. Yeah, that sounds good.

Ben Curtis: So as we have mentioned a few times in the past here, whenever we use the Market Intelligence dashboard to open an insurance company's book of business, but we also compare that to the market average. And the default when you land here is just seeing the overall market. And it is always fun to take a look at that. There has been quite a few times throughout the last 12 months here where that map view has been red and we've had policies declining, but we actually have a pretty

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Much green map right now.

Raymond Moss: And that's been

Ben Curtis: And looking at the overall policy count, a positive trend in net policies outstanding in the market.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that it's been fun to watch that over the really the last just couple months here really shift.

Ben Curtis: Well, I do we've talked about this. I think we overuse the word fun. I'll be honest. I think the word like relieved, encouraged, maybe, is

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Actually a better word. Like it's been a tough market and it's actually really great to see that policy count going up. It's I think it's more than just fun. If you would you agree with that.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, I it yeah, relieved is a good way to put it. And that's nice to be able to see. Now you have to understand it within the context of that it's the ten thousand foot view. You know, you get into the segments, you get into a particular state, everyone's book of business looks a little bit differently, but it's just a whole different gut check starting point than a year ago, where day after day I'd come to the dashboard to look something up, and I'd just glance and, yeah, everything's still red. We're still in this you know, what

Ben Curtis: Declining market.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, right, where so for whatever it's worth, that's

Ben Curtis: Okay. So let's just look at that real quick here. We're and we need to remember to say some of these numbers for those listeners who are only listening and not watching this. So the market overall, and we're gonna round these numbers the nearest thousand for now because we're at big numbers. So three hundred and seventy one thousand total policies in the market. We are excluding the household goods and passenger carriers. Want to caveat that. So we really are have this trimmed down to that interstate four higher market. But three hundred and seventy one thousand total policies represents a four percent increase in total outstanding policies from a year ago. So do you wanna set that context and just go back in time, go to the as of a year ago and just compare what the market looked like for that trailing twelve month period?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, so let's do Yeah, so let's go all the way back in time and look at it as though we were talking, having the same conversation one year ago, looking back a whole nother year, because we can do that in the dashboard.

Ben Curtis: So yep, so that's the as of one year ago compared with two years ago. So like you said, the

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: The full trailing twelve month period.

Raymond Moss: And this is what we've been seeing for a long time. This red sh you know, entire market is shrinking graphic with, you know, a red map. That's what we've been seeing for

Ben Curtis: Right.

Raymond Moss: Much of the last twelve months. And over the last couple months, we were trending green and it was interesting. Sometimes I'd log in the morning and, you know, we'd be green and then we'd dip back below, but we've been, you know, inching out of that meet you know, middle ground and solidly in the green, which is a fun

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Right.

Raymond Moss: Place to be.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, it's really great. So yeah, just to state these numbers then, a year ago there was three hundred and fifty seven thousand total policies in the market, and that was down four percent from the two years ago. So the previous year behind

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: That. So we've had a solid couple years of declining market and just things really being tight out there.

Raymond Moss: And there's all sorts of reasons,

Ben Curtis: So it's great to see

Raymond Moss: You know, behind that. You know, everyone who's been in the industry talking with motor carriers, everyone draws their own conclusions, right? And everyone has their own reasons. But there was the overall, you know, the freight recession, as everyone called it. And then there was, you know, the reality that in 2020 and 2021, everybody and

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: Their, you know, brother started a motor carrier because the rates were so high and everyone thought I can, you know I can make a million bucks. And so there was a ton of people who jumped in, but then that that the tumultuousness of that had to work its way out of the market. And so potentially we're on the other side of that. I don't know entirely, but that is smoothing out for sure in the data.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we got a lot of ground to cover. Let's just why don't you switch back to the as of now compared to a year ago view? We'll just summarize a couple more things here. So market overall up four percent. Let's go ahead and look. We've got it broken down on the site here. So single unit growth is up six percent, right?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, l I decent number of single unit motor carriers that are out there.

Ben Curtis: We're up 2% in the non-fleet market. And then we're showing a 1% increase in the fleet market. So at least each of the subsets is positive with that 4% overall market growth. So that's encouraging to see. And then

Raymond Moss: That is.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and I also have noted, we noted this in the past looking at this, but I'm still seeing this hold true as well. If you just switch back to the as of a year ago one more time, I'm sorry. I want to compare that.

Raymond Moss: No, that's fine.

Ben Curtis: That new business percentage, because we track that relationship duration. So a year ago, 41% of the policies in the market were in their first year business. You see that in the relationship duration, zero to one year, 41%. If

Raymond Moss: Yep. Right there. Yep.

Ben Curtis: We go reset it and go back to as of now, so not only is there more policies in the market overall, but that new business percentage, the yeah, the zero to one year business,

Raymond Moss: Mm.

Ben Curtis: Dropped to forty percent. So what that tells

Raymond Moss: So

Ben Curtis: Me is we haven't just injected new policies and churned the market, but that the mature business in the market is actually sustaining and holding true. There's less people exiting the market.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's a really I would think that that's a healthy indicator.

Ben Curtis: It certainly yeah, this is a broad a still a broad way to look at it, but that certainly feels like a healthy indicator.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, 'cause we're looking at everything. We don't yeah, we're not taking out any states, we're not taking out any segments, we're not nothing like that. We're looking at a pretty broad brush approach right now.

Ben Curtis: Because with that 4% market overall growth, we could the one way to accomplish that would be healthy fleets leaving the market and a bunch of single unit guys jumping in to outweight the total number. So that's why pointing out the fact that we're positive in each of the segments and maintaining that mature business tells us that the market overall is sustaining. People are staying where they're at. And we still have new market entrants that are bringing that those net policies up. All good signs.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, and I think it's interesting that you point that out because all the anecdotal evidence that people heard in passing and what they experienced at the underwriting and at the agency level back in 2020, 2021, even into 2022, there was a lot of guys leaving fleets to start their own trucking company, right? So when that total number of motor carriers majorly inflated, it wasn't necessarily a sign that that was healthy, you know. It was artificial. Yeah,

Ben Curtis: It wasn't fundamentally healthy. Yeah.

Raymond Moss: It wasn't a fundamentally healthy thing. It was a sugar high of making it appear that there's a whole bunch more trucks on the road when, okay, there's more authorities on the road, but you

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: Know, those guys didn't have, whatever it was, oftentimes the expertise or the business acumen to really sustain that. And now they've kind of come back into the fold of different fleets driving for established companies again. So anyway, that's all anecdotal, but this definitely tracks with that, to kind of push that evidence forward.

Ben Curtis: Much healthier market.

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Yep. Okay. So we got a lot of ground to cover. Let's go ahead and jump into single unit. So we're gonna here's what we're gonna track today. Single unit, then we'll go to non fleet, then we'll go to fleet. And I got a little process that I want to walk through here. So I see you got a couple tabs open. Do you have Market Explorer open in a different tab? Because I want to be able to go back and forth.

Raymond Moss: I do, I got it right here.

Ben Curtis: Okay, perfect. And I see you've got the active DOT and the auto liability filing turned on, which is great because right now I do want to look at that We're gonna we're evaluating that interstate for hire market today, and that helps really zero in on that for us. So here's the process that I want to follow. In order to look at the single unit market, I want to start in Market Explorer and filter single unit. That's gonna pull out our weighted insurer list. And I want to just go through the list of the top insurers for single unit. So no surprise there. The number one insurer of single units in the for hire market, Progressive, by a

Raymond Moss: Yes.

Ben Curtis: Huge margin. So let's switch back over to that to Market Intelligence tab. Let's look at Progressive. They're the number one single unit. And in fact, to not distract from the numbers, if you want, we can just turn on the single unit business here. So we're just looking at that overall. We can see that in the map view and all of that then. All right.

Raymond Moss: Got it.

Ben Curtis: So of the single unit business — let's see, I jotted down that number here because we just lost it on the screen. No, I didn't jot it down. Yeah, there we

Raymond Moss: Over in Market Explorer here.

Ben Curtis: About 178,000 total single units, and Progressive has — switch back to Market Intelligence — yeah, Progressive has sixty-one thousand of those. So

Raymond Moss: Sixty thousand of Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Basically they're holding what, over thirty percent of the single unit market.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. And look at that. This is interesting. That four they're four percent up, which is very much just tracking the general market. And they have such a large segment of it, I guess that that really does make sense.

Ben Curtis: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Within each segment are actually creating that average, or if they're off of that average, where's the arbitrage getting made up? So they are track in single unit. Progressive is tracking pretty close to that. They're just slightly below the overall market average for single unit. The growth was six percent in single unit overall. And it's four percent for Progressive.

Raymond Moss: Yep. Yep.

Ben Curtis: All right. So next on that list was Great West, right? Let's go look at how Great West is doing single unit.

Raymond Moss: Alright, so I'll leave all the rest of my filters the same. I'm just switching this over to look at Great West. Now. Yeah, they're

Ben Curtis: So look at that. Great West has tw twenty one thousand of the policies, single unit policies. They're

Raymond Moss: Wow.

Ben Curtis: Four percent down over the year. So market that's a ten per ten percent

Raymond Moss: So that's a big deviation because the market in single unit

Ben Curtis: Deviation.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. The market in single unit is up by six percent. Great West in single unit is down by four percent. Yeah, so that's a deviation of ten percent. That's a very different picture. That's not just saying they're down four percent. There's meaning to the down ten percent.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so look back at our list in Market Explorer again. We'll just go back and forth between these. The third in the list, GEICO, right? So let's

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Curtis: See if GEICO is making up any of that difference.

Raymond Moss: Wow. That's a lot of green in the GEICO single unit what they've been writing. That's a lot.

Ben Curtis: I think we're seeing some of the arbitrage here. So I'm gonna state the numbers. So we've got GEICO accounts for eighteen thousand single unit policies, and that is up fifty four percent over the last year.

Raymond Moss: And I'll just point out, if we were to go back in time, and in fact I'll just do it here for the heck of it, a year ago they were they had what is that, twelve thousand policies, but that is a seven hundred and sixty three percent increase from a year before that even because everyone knows

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: That GEICO came into the market two ish years ago. So that's a lot of motor carriers, single unit business they had to take from different places.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, to get to 18,000 in just a couple of years.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: So what that shows though is what's all happening? There's a lot of churn that is happening in the market. This is representing what that churn looks like. The market overall for single unit up six percent. But how is that being accomplished? Well, GEICO's taking a lot of it, and that is impacting the couple of top players in the market who are actually below that market average growth. So just for fun,

Raymond Moss: Yeah, really.

Ben Curtis: And we're not gonna do this on all of them, but why don't you scroll down and just take a quick look at where GEICO's most of their business is coming from? Progressive and Great West are the first two in the list, yeah, no surprise.

Raymond Moss: Right. Yeah, look at that. They took a lot from Progressive. The most from Progressive, I'll just say. They do have Yeah. A lot. But

Ben Curtis: Yeah, by a huge margin. My goodness. How many did they take from Progressive there? What's that say?

Raymond Moss: They took almost five thousand policies from Progressive in the past year. Now

Ben Curtis: Just in the last year. Wow.

Raymond Moss: If I just change this to say in the last two years, how many did they take from Progressive? Yeah, that goes up to eleven thousand policies.

Ben Curtis: Now, Progressive the number one single unit insurer, of course they're gonna be a large source of that business for GEICO, but still just seeing those numbers like that, that's pretty

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: Extraordinary.

Raymond Moss: And I'll point out too that GEICO is doing better than the market average of renewing at the first renewal that first that single unit business. So it's not like they're

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: A sieve where it's all just falling out of the bottom. They're doing a good job of renewing that.

Ben Curtis: At least not yet. Yeah. And that is something that we've been talking about for the last several months — how is GEICO gonna do? Are they taking on too much business too quickly? And are they gonna start to fade? And at least

Raymond Moss: Well, everyone wanted to know that.

Ben Curtis: So far, at least so far we're not seeing it fade. That those numbers are still really strong. In fact, if you look

Raymond Moss: Yes.

Ben Curtis: At GEICO now, just trim that down. Look at it now compared to six months ago.

Raymond Moss: Okay. GEICO now compared to six months ago.

Ben Curtis: They're still up thirteen percent from six months ago. So

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: They're they haven't they haven't stopped writing business, that's for sure.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it's interesting and the percentages and when you have someone like that that's coming into the market and they have they're driving so much business that sometimes perspective this happens for me at least, perspective gets lost in the percentages versus the large numbers of business that's growing and you think,

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: Thirteen percent growth. Well, you know what? That's off of a huge number. So that's still very meaningful.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And meaningful

Raymond Moss: So that that's very cool.

Ben Curtis: Meaningful because it indicates where is the trend still happening. And

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: It is still positive, which is important because it means that they're still aggressively writing business.

Raymond Moss: Now it's important to point out that we're looking at the entire map here. And if you drill down into different states, man, you can see some totally different stories. So don't take this, you know, ten thousand foot approach about GEICO in the single unit as applying to every state because it's different. It's you can see on the map right here, I can see some states where they got you know three policies. Well, that state's not growing with GEICO, right? So it's

Ben Curtis: Right.

Raymond Moss: It's absolutely different when you get even more granular. We can't go through every granular scenario here on the podcast today, but it's worth knowing that you can get granular if you want to and apply that knowledge in your day-to-day.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I would highly recommend for people as we do this overview, jot down some notes of the things that stand out most to you or the insurance companies that are most intriguing, and then go back and dig in your own and pull some of these threads. There's so much that

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: We're skipping over, but we chose today, instead of following all the little rabbits and pulling all the little threads to just try and stay at that high level and get a good broad brush of what's happening in the market. So to that end. I jotted down the list of the next few that were over there for Market Intelligence. So let's just pull up just switch the dashboard here. Yeah, go ahead and stay or yeah, reset it to the now compared to a year ago. We'll

Raymond Moss: Yep. Okay.

Ben Curtis: Keep that consistent look. All right, next on the list was Northland. Let's see how they're doing with single unit.

Raymond Moss: All right, Northland single unit now versus a year ago. They're up seven percent. So again, that's tracking. Yeah,

Ben Curtis: Almost dead on the market average.

Raymond Moss: But a little better even. So that's cool.

Ben Curtis: Yep. All right. Canal next on the list.

Raymond Moss: Wow, I will also just point this out. Great renewal rate with Northland on single unit. That's very cool.

Ben Curtis: That is actually pretty extraordinary.

Raymond Moss: That's a really good renewal rate. All right, Canal? Is that what you said? All right, going to Canal. Single unit with Canal now versus the year ago. Ooh, they are down Yeah,

Ben Curtis: Thirteen percent down.

Raymond Moss: Down thirteen percent. That's and they're and you can see it looking the first year renewal rate, they are below the market. They the market is at forty five percent on single unit first year renewals and Canal's only at thirty eight percent. So that there's a decent amount of that that just falls out of the bottom. That's rough.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. And Canal still accounts for forty five hundred policies in that single unit market.

Raymond Moss: That's a lot. That's a lot of single unit policies.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Yeah. So we're still in they're the what do we what are we at then? The fifth largest or sixth largest insurer. They're the

Raymond Moss: Let me go back over here. Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Fifth largest insurer of single unit.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: That is pretty amazing how much of the market is in that top five. The fact that Progressive had 60,000

Raymond Moss: That's a huge number.

Ben Curtis: Policies, we're down to the fifth, and they have under 5,000 policies in that market. It really is pretty extraordinary how lopsided the market really is. But that means that the opportunity and the real moves that are happening under a little bit. So I want to go ahead and go through the next few, even though they're quite a bit smaller, because this is where we start to see the huge deviation. All right. So after Canal comes Northland, or I'm sorry, after Canal comes Accredited. We already looked at Northland. Accredited. And we've mentioned Accredited on a few podcasts here before, so if you've been listening, this is not going to be a surprise, but we still gotta

Raymond Moss: Wow.

Ben Curtis: Look at it.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, they're down significantly. Their renewal rate is just painful to see. They got they still have call it twenty seven hundred policies in single unit. That's down twenty six percent from a year ago. That's just rough.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. What are those renewal rates? Just list that for the first couple of policy

Raymond Moss: So f

Ben Curtis: Years.

Raymond Moss: If you are a single unit and you're with Accredited, your first year renewal rate is eleven percent. Second year is nine percent.

Ben Curtis: So nine out of ten policies they write are gone after the first year.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's

Ben Curtis: Sometimes it's so shocking you have to restate it to make sure. Did I actually hear that right? That is what that actually means. That's insane.

Raymond Moss: Right. Yeah. So nine out of ten policies written with Accredited that are new business, they leave after the first year.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. All right. So they're still in that top ten list of single unit insurers, but really struggling right now. All right. DB insurance.

Raymond Moss: Absolutely. What's next? DB?

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: Okay. Single unit. Wow.

Ben Curtis: So about twenty five hundred. And

Raymond Moss: I always find this very interesting because look at that. DB is very regional, for whatever reason. They've got a big

Ben Curtis: It is California.

Raymond Moss: A big chunk in California. I'm gonna ignore these states that have like one or two. And then they are very green in Indiana, very green in Ohio, very green in Pennsylvania, and it's just a totally different you know.

Ben Curtis: That's it. Yeah. They basically have four states of business.

Raymond Moss: Right. That's very cool.

Ben Curtis: So, yeah, super interesting to see, and important to know if you're in that Midwest, because they're another top ten insurer for single unit.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that is really interesting. And who's ever driving that growth for single unit for DB in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, you're doing a good job. That's awesome.

Ben Curtis: No doubt. Okay, another one we've talked about on a few podcasts recently as well. So another one that won't be a surprise to some, but Clear Blue, absolutely an extraordinary story. Let's see what they're doing in single unit right now.

Raymond Moss: All right, Clear Blue pulling them up now versus a year ago. Wow. Yeah. Big growth. And again, it's in just a couple states, but they have

Ben Curtis: So we gotta say that we gotta say the percentage 'cause it compare to compare it with the ones we've just been

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: Talking about, it's extraordinary.

Raymond Moss: They have a total of twenty one hundred policies and that is up a hundred and twenty five percent now versus a year ago. That's a huge amount of growth in single unit.

Ben Curtis: So they are just growing extraordinarily fast. I have talked to a few producers in the industry too who are saying that people just can't compete with their rates. They're pricing really low. And I'm sure some of our listeners will relate to that and are finding the same thing. It does make me wonder about the longevity and how they're gonna end up doing with renewals for this business that maybe they're underpricing. So we'll have to wait and see.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, a lot of that business came in it within the last year. And so if we've you know, I'm gonna be interested to watch over the next three, six, nine, twelve months, how does this first year renewal rate does it stay the same? Does it go up or down? 'Cause right now they're kind of tracking the market average for first year renewal. So hey, that's great.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Yeah. So let's this is a great example though. Let's compare it renewal rate to relationship duration. This is why

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: It's really powerful to put those side by side. The relationship duration, only 14% of their book is in

Raymond Moss: Is renewed.

Ben Curtis: Its is in its second year, which so when we look at the first year renewal rate, it's based on that those policies that went through. They renewed at 44, 45% last year for

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: New for new business.

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: But only fourteen percent of their book was new business last year. That's a small amount of policies. So now seventy-nine, almost eighty percent of their policies that they currently hold are new business. Is that amount of policy still gonna renew at a forty four percent rate? Or are we gonna see that really fall off next year?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, time will tell if they actually are able to retain that, 'cause maybe that small sample set that's the only thing available to calculate that first year renewal is just such a small sample set because they haven't gotten enough people to their first renewal yet. That's gonna start to go down, and the only way to know

Ben Curtis: All right, so

Raymond Moss: That is to watch it.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So before you actually move on the screen, let me ask you this. We've talked about it a few times, so you probably know the number one state they're writing business, but do you know one of the other troubling states? Well, where are they writing the most business?

Raymond Moss: Well, I think I remember this. Yeah, so I'm cheating a little bit, but it was Texas, it was Florida, and I think California, am I right about that? Yeah, there

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So

Raymond Moss: It is.

Ben Curtis: So obviously those three states, especially Florida, is a little troubling with how much business they're writing there and the rates. How many policies do they have in Florida?

Raymond Moss: Hundred and fifty seven, but they you know, eighty six of those came within the last year, so it's a hundred and twenty one percent increase in Florida. So it's a they got a lot of growth in Florida, percentage wise for sure.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So we'll see what happens there. I know that that can be a challenging

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: A challenging market and so yeah, we'll see what happens.

Raymond Moss: California, just for fun. They have a hundred and sixty eight policies in California. Well a hundred and fifty nine of them are new this year. So

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, what happens with those, you know? Yes.

Ben Curtis: Time will tell. All right, one more on the single unit list. Hyundai Marine and Fire. Not one we talk about very often, but they are actually in that top ten list for single unit insurers.

Raymond Moss: Wow, really?

Ben Curtis: This might surprise you.

Raymond Moss: Look at that.

Ben Curtis: And yeah.

Raymond Moss: That actually connects from the point — let me just read the stats and I'll say my thought here. Hyundai Marine and Fire, two thousand policies, forty five percent increase now versus a year ago. It's all in California. That is my gut tells me, because I don't know, but my gut tells me that's gotta be some kind of program for these guys that were independent contractors that got their life jostled up. By the regulatory state in California trying to reclassify all these people from independent contractors telling them they had to be a company. And we know truckers. They are people that are independent. They want,

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: You know, to drive their own life, so to speak. So they just decided, okay, I'll start my authority. It's gonna be harder. The state's making it more difficult for me to make to do my job, but I'm gonna push through. And they are. They're pushing through.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so just to summarize, that was the last one I was going to look at for single unit. So to summarize that conversation, then we're seeing six percent year over year growth in net policies in single unit over the last year. That could tempt you to think that that market is pretty stable. But as we're seeing, there's a lot of arbitrage and there's some key players that are significantly down and significantly up. And I think understanding who those are on each side and being aware

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Of what impact that's having on the market right now is just important if you're playing in that single unit game or just to understand how that's maybe moving or influencing those insurance companies. Cause keep track of those names. Some of those names are going to pop up in our conversations here about non-fleet and fleet. And I always do wonder how much what's happening in one market ends up affecting the other markets because it is all risk

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: That's on their books and it has to play in to some degree. So very interesting to see what's happening at the individual insurer level within that segment. Okay, should we move on to nonfleet?

Raymond Moss: Alright, so I'm gonna clear out our filters here. Yeah, so let's start with this. All right. So I'm on the entire market. I put in here two to nine units. Let me just read where we're at overall. Across the nation, 136,000 policies. That's up two percent from a year ago. So we got growth in the non fleet segment. And pretty ubiquitously across the nation. There's a couple states that are a little bit red, but generally we see a lot of green on the map.

Ben Curtis: Yep. Okay, so let's switch over to your Market Explorer tab and let's do the same thing there. Let's switch from single unit over to those nonfleets and see what our list of top insurers are. So why don't we start with this? Let's just read through that top ten insurer list there.

Raymond Moss: So no surprise, I got Progressive at the top, then Great West, GEICO, Northland, Canal, Acuity, Century, and Berkley. So there's our top insurers for the non fleet segment overall across the nation, very broad brush.

Ben Curtis: All right. And so then I jotted down a couple others. So just scroll down. I want to I wanna just note the couple that are after that as well. So we'll

Raymond Moss: Look, Clear Blue is right after Berkley there. Universal Casualty. Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so let's switch back over and we'll go ahead and take a look at those companies and then see what's happened at the individual level here. So Progressive, first one in the list. And remember, our market average that we're comparing to is that two percent growth. So Progressive, not only are number one single unit, but also non fleet. So man, they are driving the market in a big way. Let's see what they're doing in the non fleet.

Raymond Moss: Down three percent. They got call it twenty seven thousand policies. So similar story

Ben Curtis: So a five percent net difference with the two percent growth in the market.

Raymond Moss: Right. So it's not as intense of a arbitrage of, you know, comparing the ten percent in non f in

Ben Curtis: In single unit.

Raymond Moss: The single unit, but it's in a similar direction. We're down three percent, which is a total

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and

Raymond Moss: Of five percent when you compare the growth in the overall market for non fleet.

Ben Curtis: And once again, at a twenty seven at twenty seven thousand policies, just a huge

Raymond Moss: That's a huge number.

Ben Curtis: Chunk of that non fleet market. So pretty extraordinary.

Raymond Moss: Look how different it is per state. I just want to emphasize that because wherever you are in the country, it starts to get really different when you consider the region or the state. Like it is just different. So if you're in for example

Ben Curtis: Yeah, let me point that out. You showed GEICO in single unit and some of the red states were because they have, like, a couple of policies there. So who cares? If they've got five policies in a state and it shows as red, that's not really significant.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, big deal. But this is totally different in nonfleet.

Ben Curtis: Progressive has huge numbers of policies in these states and major differences. Like let's just point a couple

Raymond Moss: Yeah, look

Ben Curtis: Of those out.

Raymond Moss: Look at this. Minnesota. They have big growth in Minnesota in the non fleet segment.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, still state the number of policies and the growth there.

Raymond Moss: Five hundred and eight policies, which is up twenty five percent from a year ago in nonfleet in Minnesota. That's big gross.

Ben Curtis: Now compare that to Illinois, right next door there.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, compared to Illinois, which is they got two thousand policies, that's down ten percent. They lost two hundred and twenty non fleet.

Ben Curtis: How about Texas?

Raymond Moss: Texas is a total of twenty two hundred, down wow, twenty percent. They lost five hundred and fifty four policies in Texas in this nonfleet segment. So state by state

Ben Curtis: But flip over to Florida?

Raymond Moss: Florida, they're up big, up a hundred policies. They got seven hundred policies in Florida.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So just extraordinary the difference in regions of the country here and huge swings. So they're their net book

Raymond Moss: Very different. Yeah, very different.

Ben Curtis: Down three percent. And with that five percent difference to the market average, but the amount of the market they control, that means somebody else out there is making up the difference for the net green move. So as we go through this list, I'm curious to see there's gotta be some big winners in there that are off setting. Progressive being five percent below the market average.

Raymond Moss: All right, so who's the next one? Let's go to number two.

Ben Curtis: Yep. So Great West also number two in the non fleet, like they were in single unit.

Raymond Moss: All right, so I got Great West. I'm still on that non fleet, two to nine units. Now compared to a year ago, they're down six percent in the non fleet segment, which that's a difference that's huge.

Ben Curtis: And they still control almost 15,000 policies.

Raymond Moss: Wow.

Ben Curtis: So, well below what Progressive was, but still a huge chunk of that nonfleet market, and down even more. So now we just took the top two players in non fleet, both of them net negative and well below the market average. This is just stacking up even more green opportunities that's all gonna have to get made up by the smaller players in the market.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, really. Wow.

Ben Curtis: Which means they're gonna see some exciting moves the further we move down this list because all that arbitrage has gotta come out somewhere.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, okay, let's see it now. Let's go to the next one. Tell me what number three was again.

Ben Curtis: Okay. Well just real quick, look at how red this map is compared to Progressive, which had quite a bit

Raymond Moss: Yeah. This map

Ben Curtis: Of green. Great West is down almost everywhere across the country right now in non fleet.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, Great West is down pretty significantly in this. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Curtis: Okay, GEICO is number three.

Raymond Moss: All right, so we got

Ben Curtis: We saw them up big in single unit. Let's see where they're at in non fleet.

Raymond Moss: Whoa, they are up in non fleet twenty nine percent now compared to a year ago. Two to nine units. They got eight thousand policies and they are green in so many states. The only states that are of consequence, I'd say, where they actually have a decent number of policies where they're red, it looks like, is Indiana and Ohio. Wow.

Ben Curtis: Yep. Everywhere else they're pretty much green. So they're killing

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: It in the non fleet. But at only eighty two hundred total policies and up twenty nine percent, that doesn't come anywhere close to making up for the difference that Progressive and Great West

Raymond Moss: Correct.

Ben Curtis: Are down. So let's keep moving down the list and see what else is happening. So after GEICO was Northland.

Raymond Moss: Northland is doing really well. Northland non fleet, fifty four hundred policies, fourteen percent increase.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, healthy — I would say just a healthy market. Nothing extraordinary

Raymond Moss: They're doing good. Renewal rate

Ben Curtis: There but solid.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, renewal rate looks good. Wow, Northland, they're doing well. That's really cool.

Ben Curtis: All right, Canal was after Northland.

Raymond Moss: All right, pulling up Canal, non fleet. They have a total of about thirty five hundred policies. That's down twelve percent. So there you go, there's a little bit of that difference getting pulled out of Canal's book.

Ben Curtis: Well, it's actually adding to the negative side yet. We still got a lot to make up, which means there's gotta be some beyond GEICO, there's gotta be some other key winners here still

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Right.

Ben Curtis: To come 'cause they're adding to that negative side.

Raymond Moss: Right, yeah, yeah, you're right.

Ben Curtis: All right, so Acuity.

Raymond Moss: This will be interesting. I hear so much from Acuity from different agents, different producers. Let's see where they're at. Wow. Thirty three hundred policies. They're up thirty two percent in non fleet, two to nine units. That's green everywhere.

Ben Curtis: And

Raymond Moss: That's amazing.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, now there are some regions they're not writing and it's gotta be strategic. Here's the things that stand out. Zero policies in California, Florida, New York. So and those are some of the most challenging markets, right? With where insurers struggle the most and where the risks are really challenging.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, they are they this is what this makes me think. Acuity is staying disciplined on what they wanna write, but they are pounding it on writing where they intend to write. That's intentionality,

Ben Curtis: Yes. Which and

Raymond Moss: If you ask me.

Ben Curtis: All right, we pointed this out on another one. Ray, look up at the renewal rate graph for Acuity.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it's amazing. Renewal rate 84% on first renewal, two to nine units.

Ben Curtis: Outstanding.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's so good. Wow.

Ben Curtis: So I mean yeah, they're down a ways in the list as far as the top insurers. I mean, still healthily in that top ten, but they're not in that first four or five. You have if you are writing nonfleet and you are in the markets that they are interested in though, they are so strong, you have got to be aware of players like this.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, 'cause they are growing, thirty two percent growth over the past year. Man, I wish I had a time machine. I can't wait to see in a year what this looks like. It'll be so fun.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So they are killing I think you said it perfectly. They appear visually here with the data that they have a very disciplined strategy, they know what they want, and they are aggressively getting the business that they want.

Raymond Moss: I'm so tempted to scroll down. I wanna see what the safety picture looks like. That's pretty good. Look at that. Only

Ben Curtis: It's beautiful. Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Two percent red ISS, only seven percent yellow ISS, a lot of green, and of course, a decent number of motor carriers that don't have a calculated ISS score because they're just so small — we're still talking about two to nine units — but that's a good underwriting discipline

Ben Curtis: Really great.

Raymond Moss: By all indications.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so let's click through a few of these other ones now. We got Sentry. This one's not real exciting.

Raymond Moss: All right, so let's go Sentry. We have a total of about three thousand policies, down four percent. Yeah, kind of a mix of different states, red and green, not a lot of specific direction there.

Ben Curtis: Yep. All right, so the next one after Sentry was Berkley. This one surprised

Raymond Moss: Okay.

Ben Curtis: Me a little bit, not another one we don't talk about real often.

Raymond Moss: Wow. Yeah. Up thirty two percent. Twenty five hundred policies in this two-to-nine nonfleet segment. Up thirty two percent in green in just about every state that's meaningful here.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. And so one thing that I noticed too, green in Florida. And

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: So I wonder how their offering in Florida compares with like for example Clear Blue. I don't know.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Yeah, it would be I'm not gonna do it, but I'd be so tempted to drill down and then just compare the two because it's fun. You can do that in each individual state.

Ben Curtis: Well, Clear Blue is next on the list, so even though we're not gonna compare them one-to-one,

Raymond Moss: No, specifically.

Ben Curtis: Let's at least just look at Clear Blue next though and see what they're doing with the non fleet.

Raymond Moss: All right, so here we go. Clear Blue, non fleet, two to nine units now versus a year ago, twenty two hundred policies, up ninety two percent. That is a lot of green, and again, mostly coming from Texas, California, and Florida. Wow. Very cool.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, just extraordinary. Okay, Universal Casualty.

Raymond Moss: Okay. Universal Casualty.

Ben Curtis: Here's where we're gonna start to make up some of that arbitrage.

Raymond Moss: All right, Universal Casualty. I got about 2,000 policies. Wow. 294% increase? That is a ton.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. So they're just storming onto the scene as well.

Raymond Moss: A lot of growth. Now this is fascinating. A lot of growth in California. Decent amount of Texas. And then look at this little Midwest pocket here. You got Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, where there's a good bit of growth. And again, Florida. Very cool. Yeah, I didn't see

Ben Curtis: Yep. Just killing it there. Okay.

Raymond Moss: This coming. That's neat.

Ben Curtis: This was a couple further down on the list, but I before we leave nonfleet, we've got to just take a look at Accredited. We did this on single unit

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: As well. Accredited's getting smoked. It's just important to see what's happening here because it is so significant.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, Accredited is getting smoked in non-fleet. That's rough. Okay, so Accredited now versus a year ago, two to nine units, fourteen hundred, call it fifteen hundred policies that are on there right now, but that's down by thirty nine percent compared to

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: A year ago. And the renewal rate, let me just read these out loud because that is painful. The renewal rate, first year renewals, eleven percent. So again, just to state it with in the same way we talked about with the single units.

Ben Curtis: Single unit.

Raymond Moss: Is that nine out of ten policies that they write, new business, do not renew? That's hard.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. That's painful.

Raymond Moss: Okay. Wow. All right. Anyone else in the non fleet you want to go through after Accredited? I don't want to stay here too long.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, those were my main ones to cover here. I think that pretty much hits the high points and the low points, I guess you could say.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, really. Wow. And then yeah, there's so many different niche cages, but let's move on to fleet.

Ben Curtis: But is it isn't that what once again, just to restate this, the further down the list we get, the more the deviation from the average starts to manifest.

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: And so this is what I said at the intro with being surprised should really be encouraging and something exciting because there's got to be some opportunities in what we've talked about already that people didn't realize.

Raymond Moss: Right. There absolutely are.

Ben Curtis: My word, I didn't realize there was so much opportunity in that book, or I didn't realize that was such a strong player. I'm writing there. I need to be considering that market. Or for those underwriters, wow, I had no idea that all the why so much business was coming from here, or that I didn't need to be worried about competing with that market. They're obviously moving out of that area or whatever the case is, right? But there's got to be so many things like that.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. When you're going through that as an underwriter and you know that the market someone's coming from has very little chance of retaining, you know, it just changes the way in which you're underwriting that specific risk. It absolutely does. All right, do you want to go to fleet? All right, I'm gonna pull up Market Explorer and I'm going to go fleet ten or more units. You want me to go as broad as that? Okay, so ten or more units on Market Explorer. Top insurers. Of course, we got Great West, then we go national

Ben Curtis: Hey, hey, we finally pushed Progressive and GEICO out of the top of the list though when we switched over to Fleet.

Raymond Moss: We did. Let it be known that GEICO and Progressive are just not big names in the fleet segment. So most people know that, but there you go, proofs in the pudding. Great West, National Interstate, Old Republic — then there we go. We start getting more granular. We do have Progressive here as the fourth, but then we get Acuity, Sentry Berkley, Zurich. And then we just keep going further down the line. MSTransverse. Look at that. Wow.

Ben Curtis: Yep. Yeah. So, all right, I got those jotted down here. Let's go to the Market Intelligence dashboard and take a look at these. So start with Great West. Well, the market — well,

Raymond Moss: All right. All right.

Ben Curtis: Sorry, let's capture the total market for fleets there.

Raymond Moss: All right, so total market for fleets — I cleared out all my filters, hold on, let me put in my fleet filter. My bad. I am on the entire market compared now versus a year ago. Ten or more units, fleets are up about one percent. We got forty two hundred roughly fleets. Sorry, forty two thousand fleets across the market.

Ben Curtis: Right. Yep. Okay, so yeah, slightly up, for the most part flat. So that's what we're gonna be evaluating each of these against. How close are you to flat? That's basically tracking the market average. So now let's take a look at Great West. That's our number one fleet market.

Raymond Moss: Alright, so here we go. Great West. Putting them in here. Here's where they're at. Great West now versus a year ago. Ten or more units. They're down three percent. They got about twenty eight hundred fleets. So again, it's kind of tracking what their book did, if I remember right, in both the single unit and the non-fleet. It's just kind of going down. Different per state, I will point out. This is where the numbers definitely it's so important because a fleet is just a whole different animal than a non fleet or a single unit.

Ben Curtis: You know, another interesting piece I want to point out here, a lot of books that we've seen declines in, they've got a struggling renewal rate. Look at Great West renewal rate, even with a book that is net negative in total policies.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Great West has great quality products and this renewal rate really shows. So just to state it here, market average in fleet is fifty two percent and Great West on the first year is seventy three percent, second year seventy four, third year seventy nine, fourth year seventy nine. They renew well on in this fleet market segment.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and then look at their maturity too. I mean, they've got one of the strongest mature books

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Of business. Our chart here groups all of the five plus year business in a book. Thirty-nine percent of their book has been with them for five or more years, well above the market average there. So what that tells me, they're down net in policies. It's not because they're shedding business. It appears they're just not writing as aggressively as some and replacing the little bit that is fallen off because they are they're still holding

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: On to the business they want to keep. And

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: I know that doesn't come as a surprise to anyone necessarily, but I just think that's worth dwelling on and pointing out for a second because they are such a key market player and because that's just so different than so many books that you see declines in.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: So it really does point to the strength of relationship that they do have with their clients.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. And knowing Great West, relationship is important to them. And so you look at this data and those the anecdotes of the data tracks with the realities of the team we know at Great West. They care about relationship. They care about quality. And so that that is definitely showing through here.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so let's they are slightly below the average though. So they're we're starting out with policies that are gonna get made up somewhere, so let's figure out where that's going. Next on the list was National Interstate.

Raymond Moss: All right, pulling up National Interstate again, fleet now versus a year ago. So They have fourteen hundred fleets and that's up twelve percent. So wow, really good growth at National Interstate. And this is a lot of green I see on this map. Really good first, second, third, and fourth year renewal rates. That's really cool to see.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, well above the market average again. And honestly, I just praised Great West's maturity. Look at the relationship duration for five plus year business for National Interstate.

Raymond Moss: It's a smaller book, but absolutely true. They have a great five plus year healthy book of business.

Ben Curtis: 42% of their book of business, five plus years. I think it was what, 39% for Great West. So

Raymond Moss: Right. Right.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, phenomenally healthy book and seeing growth in that book as well. So just another contrast that what's happening in the market doesn't mean that the key that the main players are all it's not like something is different here. They're

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: They're operating in the same market. They have some of the same general statistics as far as renewal rate, stickiness, but somebody's

Raymond Moss: And let me just point this out.

Ben Curtis: But somebody's up by twelve percent and somebody's down by four percent. Like there's fundamental differences in how they're approaching new business right now is really the only explanation I can come up with.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I'll just point this out too, 'cause a lot of people know that National Interstate have more than just the interstate for hire business on their paper. But I'm not including passenger carriers. I'm not including the household goods authorities right now. So we're doing a very close apples to apples comparison between Great West and National Interstate. And actually I should say in all of the cases that we're talking about here. So that arbitrage of, you know, saying, well National Interstate's got a bunch of household goods carriers and passenger no, we're doing an apples to apples comparison here.

Ben Curtis: Right, we've got that pulled out of the results here. We're just comparing the for hire market there or the commodity

Raymond Moss: Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Curtis: Market. Okay. After National Interstate, this is where it gets a little confusing. Old Republic was third on the list. And we know Great West is technically a subsidiary of Old Republic from a legal standpoint, from the standpoint

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: Of them being individual market actors, we're looking at them separately. Of course, if you do combine Old Republic and Great West, that is a much stronger picture

Raymond Moss: Yeah, just to read it out here, Old Republic fleet, so ten or more units now compared to a year ago, they have eighteen hundred policies, which is actually up by nine percent.

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm. So doing really

Raymond Moss: Healthy

Ben Curtis: Well.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, they are doing really, really well. So interesting. Yeah, there's so much that you could dive into there. I'd like to understand that it's interesting when you get when you scroll down and see where they took the business from and where they're losing business to. But yeah, definitely a good thing to know.

Ben Curtis: All right, so we're looking for top players who are deviated from the market average, because then that tells us that there's some major shifts happening. Fourth on the list, Progressive still did make to number four. They're not number one like they were in single unit and non-fleet. I'm just priming the pump here. Pull up Progressive. We've got some things to unpack.

Raymond Moss: So here we go, Progressive, ten or more units. Now I will note, I'm gonna point this out that Progressive, I get this, you know, clarifying question from people a decent amount of time. So I'll say it here, but that does include those protective policies because as everyone knows, Progressive bought protective, and so that's where a lot of those fleets came from. So just an FYI, those are in here. And got that all wrapped into

Ben Curtis: Yep, we got those all wrapped into this Progressive book here.

Raymond Moss: Progressive here. So fifteen hundred Fleets down twenty nine percent. Red

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: In a lot of states. Wow.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Now we talked about books being negative and comparing that to the renewal rate, look at progressives fleet renewal rate.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, first year. Ew thirty three percent.

Ben Curtis: Just an extraordinarily different picture. Now look at

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: The relationship duration. Twelve percent of their book, five plus years. Just you couldn't you

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's a lot of

Ben Curtis: Couldn't have a more contrasting look from what we just looked at with National Interstate and Great West.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, relationship in this market, relationship in this industry is so important, because this is a high-trust product. You have

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: To have trust in where you're putting when you where when you're purchasing this. And the deeper those relationships, the more trust there is. And this is a lot of fresh relationships that's in their book. Wow.

Ben Curtis: Okay, next on the list was Acuity. They were strong in that non-fleet, and I think they're gonna be strong again in fleets.

Raymond Moss: All right, so Acuity fleet, ten or more units now versus a year ago. Absolutely. They got almost fourteen hundred policies, nineteen percent increase between now and a year ago. And again, look at that very disciplined picture we see on the map here. We see green in a lot of states. We see states that are literally nothing because they're just not writing anything there, because they're staying out of California, they're out of Florida. That is

Ben Curtis: Out of New York.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, out of New York, couple other ones that are in there, but where they're writing. They are writing.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, really strong. And a

Raymond Moss: Very cool.

Ben Curtis: A lot of people know this, their short radius discipline as well. You look at our radius map

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: There, and that's totally reflected in almost all of

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Their business in that five hundred or shorter radius. So they're just not writing the long

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that is so fascinating.

Ben Curtis: Haul carriers.

Raymond Moss: Again, every time I look at a metric for Acuity, the word discipline comes to mind, and hard work. They're doing it. That's cool.

Ben Curtis: All right. Sentry I can kinda steal the thunder here. They're flat. There's not anything real interesting happening there in their book. They're pretty much tracking the market average. Thirteen hundred policies. Berkley, they're on the list. They're down three percent. If you want to click to them, you can. Nothing real interesting there.

Raymond Moss: Yep.

Ben Curtis: Twelve hundred policies in their book. Zurich. They were next in the list. Also not real exciting.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Up a up two percent, fifteen hundred policies.

Ben Curtis: Up two percent. So basically right on the market average. All right. So like where is this arbitrage coming from? Well, MSTransverse Paper, that was next in the list. And I assume a decent amount of this is Nirvana. There's probably some other policies in there as well. But

Raymond Moss: Yeah, look at that. That's a lot of growth. That's cool. A thousand policies.

Ben Curtis: Lot of business going on that paper.

Raymond Moss: Thirty four percent increase. That's

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Very cool. And look, this is again understanding the players in the market. You know, you mentioned Nirvana. What do all the insure techs really focus on? Well, they focus on plugging into technology, ELD data. And so what does that make them naturally just lean towards? Well, it's all those long haul motor carriers because they like to have the data. And what do we see here? Look at that. Basically their whole

Ben Curtis: Wow. Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Book, operating radius of a thousand plus miles. There you go.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Which is not to be taken for granted because that once again contrasts completely different picture than Acuity. Yeah.

Raymond Moss: We just looked at Acuity. Yeah, we just looked at Acuity and they were at that five, six hundred and less miles on their fleet book. But now we're looking at MSTransverse. A lot of that's Nirvana and it's virtually all a thousand plus long haul guys. Very cool.

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Definitely growth there. That's exciting to see.

Ben Curtis: All right, for sake of time, Travelers was next on the list. They're up two percent. There's nothing really interesting there. The Hartford, if you want to take a quick look at them, that's another one that I don't look at as often. And I was kind of surprised to see pretty healthy growth in that market.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, I don't often look at them either, but they have eight hundred and fifty two fleet policies. They're up thirteen percent. Hey, thirteen percent growth in fleet. That's very cool. I didn't expect that.

Ben Curtis: And a solid renewal rate as well.

Raymond Moss: And a solid renewal rate. Yep, absolutely. That's very neat.

Ben Curtis: So, all right, those were the main ones that I had in my list to cover — some of the more unique ones. You know, I just thought it would be so interesting to take this look at the market, where so many of the policies within each category are held by and represented by the top few players in the market that you would expect what's true of them to be true of everybody in the market, because you would just think that must be the reality that everybody's living in. It's fascinating to see that almost the further down the list you go, the more deviation there is. And really it would be interesting to do an episode where we actually looked at the bottom of the list and not the top of the list, because that's where you find

Raymond Moss: Yeah, and work our way from the bottom up. That would be really interesting.

Ben Curtis: But I totally encourage listeners to go do that. When any of these segments that is interesting to you, go back into that Market Explorer list. Go further down in the list and find those diamonds in the rough. Find those markets that are doing something really niche, really interesting, really market moving for their market, anyways. If they're in a state

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: Or targeting a motor carrier that's unique and useful to you, then you can. Totally capitalize on that and it can be completely different than what's happening for the big players or the market overall.

Raymond Moss: And I just want to emphasize too, come back to a point that we said at the beginning of the podcast here, where having the level of transparency on where business is growing and where it's shrinking, and the more signals the market can read, the better the market is for everybody. Because then risk appetite can be matched up to risk, and everyone wins in that case, because there are some insurers that are better at insuring certain types of risk than others. And having this level of clarity, having this level of detail that you can get into very, very niche scenarios, you can underwrite very specifically. You can produce and bring clients to market very specifically. It's a really, very cool thing to be able to see and do that with so much transparency.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, the word that comes to mind that sounds like you're describing is appetite. And

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: While we haven't actually talked specifically about appetite or used that word in this episode, that's a lot of what we're actually uncovering and discovering here. We've glossed over that to look more at the number side of things, but even the few things we've mentioned about radius in certain states, you really

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Do, and I mean, so many of the producers that we're working with are using tools like this in order to understand appetite. They do realize that The successful producers realize that they have to know where to place the business. That's the only way to really be successful. And

Raymond Moss: Yeah, and they have to go off the realness of the data, not just off what the marketing rep tells them. Because if you can see actually what an insurer is doing in the market in real time, you can bring and you can match risk to their appetite. And then everyone is better off. The motor carrier is better off, the underwriting is better off, the producing is better off. Everybody wins when you match those things up.

Ben Curtis: All right, so before we wrap up today, I got at least one other thing I wanted to share because I noticed this and we do want to try and bring any interesting or specifically relevant market updates to the forefront here. Did you see the article that just got published here recently? The FMCSA made the announcement that they are pausing the

Raymond Moss: Mm, I did see that.

Ben Curtis: Yes, the MCS-150 filing requirement.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, so more specifically, they are pausing enforcement of the requirement for the biennial update of your MCS-150 if you're a motor carrier. And that's because, as I understand it, MOTUS has been a difficult rollout for FMCSA in many regards. I don't want to detract

Ben Curtis: Mm-hmm.

Raymond Moss: From all the huge amounts of work that FMCSA

Ben Curtis: Which by the way, quick plug: if you haven't listened to last week's episode, we unpacked a whole bunch of the MOTUS updates.

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: So go back and check that out if you want to hear all about some of the good, the bad and the ugly of the MOTUS rollout.

Raymond Moss: Right. Yep. Yeah. Everyone in this industry is pulling in the same direction. So we're

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: Not trying to downcast anybody here. But the reality of it is, is that it was a bit of a rocky update and they're doing some good stuff in there, but yeah, that's a good episode to listen to. And in that vein, yeah, it sounds like the reason the enforcement of that regulation is being paused is because MOTUS is just having, it's a MOTUS thing, however they want to term that, right? So that is a

Ben Curtis: So fortunately they're recognizing that and extending some grace there. And instead of

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: Putting people in a situation because they've already done enough of that with incorrect filings, with

Raymond Moss: Yep.

Ben Curtis: Not being able to post new filings, they've really hurt some motor carriers who lost loads because that data

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: Was wrong, not because of the fault of the motor carrier. And so fortunately in this case, they've made the choice to instead of risking hurting their public profile by showing them as being out

Raymond Moss: Yeah, hurting the industry.

Ben Curtis: Of compliance. They said, all right, we're just gonna remove the requirement from now. I'm sure that they will get it sorted out and that that requirement

Raymond Moss: They will.

Ben Curtis: Will come back. And so pay attention to that, but at least wanted to let everybody know that we had seen that notification from the FMCSA come out and that at least for the time being they're pausing that biennial requirement.

Raymond Moss: Right. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe in the show notes we can post a link to that. But another thing that it's in the same vein, so I'll mention it, but I'm watching to see. I have heard from a lot of motor carriers, and a lot of market participants that another MOTUS difficulty, if I can say it that way, is that the required filing amount is inexplicably changing for motor carriers. Where they were at seven hundred and fifty and they're up

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: To a million, or they're up to five million and they're going, What in the world? Why do I suddenly have to post this limit, and so that's causing some pain in the market as well. So FMCSA, if you're listening, maybe we could address that one as well. That's definitely been a rocky issue lately.

Ben Curtis: Well, I can only assume that they must be aware of it and I'm sure that they're working on it. I've even heard the filing isn't just going up, so it's not to set people's minds at ease. It does not seem like it's just that somehow they've changed the requirements. I've actually heard some

Raymond Moss: No.

Ben Curtis: People say that their filing requirement went down when they know

Raymond Moss: Yeah, I've seen too.

Ben Curtis: That they when they know that they actually have a higher filing requirement than what's being listed now. So it seems like it's just a lot of mismatched data and some data chaos.

Raymond Moss: It definitely seems like it's a

Ben Curtis: They're in the back end of MOTUS.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it seems like it's definitely a technical issue or technical component to the way that everything filters through MOTUS and is seen by the public. And that's hard because when a regulation when something appears to change but it's not because of a regulation change, like what do you do about that? That's a hard thing to try to handle as a motor carrier and a market participant.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, hopefully they get this sorted out quickly here and

Raymond Moss: Right. Yep.

Ben Curtis: It doesn't hurt things for too long.

Raymond Moss: And if we become aware of an announcement from the FMCSA or, you know, we hear anything from, you know, our contacts, then we will definitely, you know, mention it on the podcast here, for sure.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, we're planning to take just a couple of weeks off here before we start our fall season, but we're still here and around. Definitely reach out to us and message us if you've got questions, comments, feedback, or even ideas for our next season. And we'll hopefully see everybody back here in the next month or so.

Raymond Moss: All right, we'll see you next time. Have a great day, everybody.