Because insurance carriers often consider a fleet’s tenure bands when pricing their coverage, implementing processes that raise retention rates can majorly improve a fleet’s prospects on the insurance market.

But why does driver tenure have such a high impact on a fleet’s insurance costs? This week, we’re exploring that question and drawing on the wisdom of both insurance industry veterans and Idelic’s findings.

Why Insurance Carriers Value Tenure: Safety Culture

For many insurers, long tenure bands are important because they signal that a fleet has a strong safety culture. According to Chris Vogel, Senior Vice President at Cottingham & Butler, long tenure bands show that drivers feel respected at their fleet, which indicates their fleet has a healthy safety culture and an effective Operations Department.

“The fleets that handle retention well are involved at every level. It’s not just a driver manager who’s responsible for someone. Fleets with low turnover stay involved, actively seek feedback, and genuinely care. They don’t view Joe Smith as Truck #54. They know Joe Smith. Because of that, those fleets get a lot better results.”

Why Insurance Carriers Value Tenure: Accident-Risk

In an analysis performed by Idelic’s data scientists using 20+ years of historical driver data from tens of thousands of drivers, it was discovered that the vast majority of accident-risk comes from drivers in their first two years of employment with a fleet, which is, of course, a major consideration for insurance carriers.

Note: “Risk Level” does not indicate the amount of accidents for each year, but rather the level of risk in comparison to year 1.

You’ll see that at year two, there is a significant drop in a driver’s risk, meaning drivers are 40% less likely to experience an accident during their second year with a fleet compared to their first.

Having high turnover means that your fleet often has many drivers within their first, most at-risk, year with your fleet. This has major implications for your risk and insurance costs. 

By having well-documented tenure bands of your current drivers to demonstrate how many have been with your fleet for a significant amount of time, your insurance carrier will feel more confident in your fleet’s safety and offer a more competitive pricing.

For fleets who don’t necessarily have the best turnover, there are still steps you can take to achieve a fair rate. By implementing a well-documented plan for turnover reduction and presenting an upward trend in your retention to insurance carriers, you can demonstrate that your fleet is on the road to being safer.  

The Most Effective Ways to Improve Retention and Reduce Insurance Costs

Fleets can improve retention and reduce insurance costs by implementing the right driver engagement methods, like eliciting driver feedback, implementing proactive training, and offering awards. 

While gathering feedback from all your drivers, assigning the right training to at-risk drivers, and awarding your safest drivers may seem like a difficult process, fortunately, there are tools that can help.

The Idelic Safety Suite® helps fleets consolidate their driver data, identify at-risk drivers, and assign them training that meets their specific needs.

With Safety Suite, fleets can track improvement from start to finish and promote career growth with the platform’s industry-leading Professional Development Plan Module. Using Safety Suite, fleets can also build custom engagement plans and automate their awards systems in mere minutes, ensuring they keep their drivers around for the long haul.

If you’d like to learn more about how Safety Suite prevents crashes, reduces turnover, and lowers insurance costs, watch a 2-minute demo or sign up for a deep dive here.