As the North American collision repair market continues to integrate, CARSTAR North America is leading the charge on cross-border insurance programs to provide the highest-quality repairs to customers in the U.S. and Canada, while delivering the industry standard in KPIs and performance to its insurance partners.

Recently, the CARSTAR insurance team—the largest group of insurance professionals serving the MSO segment of the collision repair industry—gathered in Charlotte in February for a first-ever summit on how to drive best practices in insurance performance across the border.

“Historically, the U.S. and Canada have had different models in how collision repair companies and insurance carriers worked together,” said Michael Macaluso, President, CARSTAR North America. “But, with the consolidation of the collision shops across North America, the need for standard repair processes and the advent of broader Performance Based Agreement (PBA) relationships with insurance carriers,” added Macaluso, “now is the ideal time to share best practices from each country and develop the most progressive approach for insurance performance in the industry.”

Several key initiatives the CARSTAR North American team has already instituted are:

• CARSTAR North America Care Center to service all CARSTAR customers
• CARSTAR Cross-Border Insurance program leveraging the Care Center make it easier to handle repairs between the customer, the U.S. CARSTAR collision shop and the Canadian insurer
• Expansion of the CARSTAR insurance team to provide CARSTAR store owners analytics-based performance reviews to meet PBA metrics

CARSTAR delivered 92 percent of its sales volume through insurance carriers in 2016, and saw growth with top 10 insurance carriers of 20 percent.  Since 2016, more than 400 new DRPs have been added to the system. CARSTAR currently leads the industry in KPI performance, include length of rental, cycle time and touch time.