In a live audience Q&A, CCC Industry Analysts Kyle Krumlauf and Erik Bahnsen unpacked trends and findings from this year’s Crash Course report – covering everything from affordability pressures and discretionary claim behavior to bodily injury escalation, ADAS repair complexity, uninsured motorists, and macroeconomic volatility. Below are the key questions and answers from the discussion.
Q: What are the top trends driving auto claims and repair complexity?
The five major trends outlined in CCC’s Crash Course 2026 report are consumer affordability challenges, smaller claims being siphoned out of the system, bodily injury severity increases, vehicle complexity’s continued impact on repair, and macroeconomic forces driving uncertainty and pricing pressure.
Altogether, these trends point to a claims environment where the issue is not one single pressure point. Instead, economic strain, vehicle technology, medical severity, coverage decisions, and consumer behavior are interacting in ways that make claims harder to predict, price, repair, and resolve.
Q: How are consumer affordability challenges affecting claims?
Consumer affordability is influencing whether people maintain full coverage, increase deductibles, file claims, or pay out of pocket. Kyle noted that motor vehicle insurance affordability is up roughly 56% compared with 2019–2020 levels, while surveys found that 8% of consumers dropped full coverage and moved to liability-only, 7% chose not to file a claim out of concern their rates would rise, and 26% had deductibles of $1,000 or more. CCC data showed a similar pattern, with 28% of Q4 repairable collision claims carrying deductibles of $1,000 or more.
For insurers and repairers, the implication is significant: affordability pressure is changing what enters the claims system. When a vehicle is driveable, damage is cosmetic, or the repair cost sits close to the deductible, consumers may choose not to file. That does not mean the loss did not happen. It means the claim may be self-paid, delayed, or left unresolved.
Q: Why are smaller claims becoming more discretionary?
Smaller claims are becoming more discretionary because higher deductibles and premium sensitivity are changing the filing decision. Kyle described this as the rise of “discretionary claims,” explaining that when year-over-year volume declines are examined, the variance is driven largely by first-party coverages. In 2025, 90% of the decline came from collision or comprehensive coverage, and through Q1 2026, 85% of the swing was still coming from first-party coverages.
This means the lower end of the claims spectrum is thinning out. A consumer with a high deductible and a driveable vehicle may decide it is not worth filing, especially if they fear a future rate increase. The remaining claims mix then skews toward larger, more complex, and higher-severity outcomes. In short: fewer low-dollar claims does not necessarily equal less risk. It can mean the risk that remains carries more weight.
Q: Are uninsured and underinsured motorist trends improving?
The analysts didn’t forecast whether uninsured and underinsured motorist populations will decline, but Erik noted that the most comprehensive industry data available through 2023 estimated that roughly one in three drivers was either uninsured or underinsured. CCC’s own casualty submission data offers a more current proxy: UM/UIM submissions represented about 8% of third-party injury claim submissions in 2022 and are closer to 16% now.
Kyle added that, given household affordability pressures and the cost of insurance, the insured pool may not be functioning as efficiently as it could. If fewer people carry adequate coverage, the burden shifts back to those who remain insured – creating a less efficient market and increasing pressure on carriers and policyholders.
Q: Why are bodily injury claims such a major concern?
Bodily injury is diverging from other auto lines because frequency and severity are moving in the opposite direction of physical damage trends. Erik explained that BI has not seen the same frequency dip as other major auto lines and is being influenced by the current social inflation environment. Medical billing at the procedure level has been rising by low double digits year over year, and BI now makes up the majority of liability dollars paid. Even though less than one in four third-party property damage exposures has a BI claim, that smaller subset now accounts for roughly 53% to 54% of liability dollars paid.
That lopsided relationship is one of the clearest signs of severity concentration. A smaller portion of claims is carrying a larger share of the financial burden, increasing the importance of early triage, medical insight, documentation, and disciplined claims handling.
Q: What role is vehicle technology playing in repair complexity?
Vehicle technology is increasing repair complexity through ADAS, diagnostics, calibrations, powertrain changes, and more specialized parts. Kyle called one data point the “number one stat” of 2025: over 28% of repairable claims included a calibration in Q4 2025, up 6.5 percentage points year over year, representing roughly a 30% increase in the share of repairable vehicles with a calibration.
The reason this matters is that these technologies are no longer limited to brand-new vehicles. ADAS adoption accelerated around the 2016–2019 model years, meaning many vehicles with advanced safety features are now aging into older vehicle categories. As Kyle explained, more vehicles – new and old – are likely to require scans and calibrations to confirm safety systems are functioning properly after repair.
Q: Does more ADAS mean fewer claims?
Not necessarily. ADAS can help reduce certain types of crashes or lower crash severity, but its impact is complicated by driver behavior, system activation, and rising repair complexity. In the Q&A, the analysts noted that more vehicles with ADAS does not automatically translate into lower claim frequency, particularly if systems are turned off, misunderstood, or offset by distracted driving.
Kyle also noted that when ADAS-equipped vehicles do get into the shop, the repair process often involves scans and calibrations. In DRP repairable claims, scans are approaching near-standard practice, with the transcript referencing almost 90% of DRP repairable claims including a scan.
For repairers, that means more technical workflows. For insurers, it means greater sensitivity around estimating accuracy, supplement management, cycle time, and repair-versus-total-loss decisions.
Q: Are repair costs leveling off?
Repair costs may appear to be stabilizing, but that does not mean repairs are getting simpler. Kyle explained that the repairable mix has skewed more heavily toward older vehicles, which can suppress the overall increase in average total cost of repair. If the vehicle mix had remained constant since 2020, he said the industry would be looking at roughly a six-percentage-point difference in the increase in average total cost of repair.
That distinction matters. Newer vehicles still cost more to repair, but the growing share of older vehicles in the repairable population can mask the underlying cost pressure. In other words, the average may look more stable, while the actual repair environment remains more variable and technical.
Q: What’s happening with claim volumes in early 2026?
Through Q1 2026, total volume was down 3.3% year over year, compared with a 7.7% decline for full-year 2025. When comprehensive claims are removed, Q1 volume was down only 1.6%, compared with 5.7% in 2025. Kyle noted that collision, specifically, was down 3.6% in Q1 2026, compared with 8.5% year over year in 2025, suggesting collision may be moving closer to stabilization.
Comprehensive remains the larger outlier. Comprehensive claims were down 12.6% through Q1 2026 after being down 16% in 2025. The analysts pointed to weather, hurricane activity, severe convective storm and hail events, and vehicle theft as major drivers of comprehensive volatility.
Q: Why was comprehensive claim volume down so much?
Comprehensive claim volume was affected by fewer major weather events, reduced theft, and the absence of major hurricane landfalls affecting auto claims in 2025. Kyle noted that 2025 did not see the same hurricane impact as the prior year, when Hurricanes Helene and Milton drove higher claim activity in affected regions. He also cited lower severe convective storm and hail activity in key states, along with vehicle thefts being down roughly 23% year over year based on NICB analysis.
However, the analysts cautioned that comprehensive exposure remains inherently volatile. Erik noted that the long-term trend in billion-dollar disasters has moved aggressively upward since 2000, even if individual years can be lighter.
Q: How are macroeconomic factors affecting claims and repair?
Macroeconomic volatility is adding another layer of complexity through tariffs, fuel costs, supply chain risk, inflation concerns, and policy changes. Kyle noted that tariffs dominated headlines and cited estimates that the tariff rate increased from roughly 2.6% to around 13% over the last year. He also discussed policy changes affecting EV sales, including the expiration of IRA tax credits, which corresponded with a 30% year-over-year increase in Q3 EV sales, followed by a 36% decrease in Q4 and preliminary estimates of a 27% decline in Q1 2026.
Erik added that macroeconomic pressures can also affect casualty, including medical billing patterns. The broader point: these forces do not sit outside claims. They influence parts costs, transportation costs, repair economics, medical costs, affordability, and consumer decisions.
Q: What should insurers and repairers take away from the Crash Course trends?
The biggest takeaway is that complexity is compounding. Affordability pressure is changing claim-filing behavior, smaller claims are increasingly discretionary, bodily injury is becoming a larger share of liability costs, vehicle technology is making repairs more technical, and macroeconomic volatility is adding uncertainty across parts, labor, fuel, medical, and consumer affordability. The industry isn’t just dealing with higher costs – it’s managing a more complicated mix of claims, vehicles, injuries, consumer decisions, and external pressures.
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