Although the rising cost of insurance shows no sign of abating, coach and bus operators should be proactive in trying to cut their premiums, according to Gallagher Insurance Brokers.
A combination of multiple factors such as a smaller insurance market, claims inflation cost, the war in Ukraine and higher parts prices has contributed to higher premiums across all types of vehicles, including coaches and buses, says Adrian Scott, Director of Transportation at Gallagher, which has direct access to all available insurers.
Speaking at Euro Bus Expo, he adds: “You do need to focus on risk-management as an operator. It’s the only way you can get some control over your premiums — the more you look at your CCTV, your internal systems and procedures, your driver reporting, whatever you can do to avoid your driver having an incident in the first place and then post-accident getting that claim into the insurer as early as possible.
“All of those things have an impact on the claims cost and, if you can manage the claims cost, you’ll see the least amount of pain in terms of your premium increase.
“Those that don’t do those things, don’t invest in CCTV, don’t have the procedures and management in place tend to see their claims cost going up, have more incidents and therefore when it comes to renewal they get a big surprise on their renewal invites, they go to the market and the market have no appetite for such high risk or exposure.
“It’s a very difficult time at the moment. We’ve gone through a soft-cycle market for 10 years so something had to change but if more insurers start to come back into it we’ll see some stability.”
