Over the last several years, the collision repair industry has faced numerous challenges, including:

• keeping employees safe during the pandemic while remaining open and operating as essential businesses;
• managing parts and material shortages from supply chain disruptions;
• navigating staffing challenges;
• meeting a growing demand for training and tooling to support the repair of an increasingly complex vehicle fleet; and
• addressing the increasing demand among customers for a digitized experience.

These challenges have impacted the auto insurance industry, as well. Nearly 90% of the overall collision repair industry revenue is from insurance-paid work — where the customer has made an insurance claim — while the remaining 10% is consumer paid out-of-pocket with no insurance claim.

As claim counts and resulting repair volumes continue to build towards pre-COVID levels, industry-wide capacity within the collision repair industry is being pushed to the brink. According to surveys conducted by CRASH Network, nearly all collision repair shops reported significant increases in their backlog of work, with 85% reporting they are scheduling new work two weeks or more into the future. Both the percentage of shops reporting they have at least some backlog and the average number of weeks of backlog continue to remain at their highest points in the past six years (Figure 1).

Figure 1. (Source: CRASH Network)