Collision Industry Contours Changing

These past years, the auto insurance and collision repair industries have navigated the winding — and often treacherous — roads of a recession. While cash-strapped consumers continue to grapple with unemployment and mounting debt, automotive sales have waned. Because the overall economic recovery has been sluggish, the resultant dip in claim frequency and number of repairs has contributed to a lingering soft market.

In its recent semi-annual publication titled “CCC Crash Course Update 2010,” CCC Information Services Inc. suggests that these factors have noticeably altered the auto damage repair landscape, perhaps irrevocably. The report’s author, Susanna Gotsch, lead analyst at CCC Information Services Inc., discussed how repairer optimism and automotive claim frequency underscores the relationship between claim frequency and sales.