Don’t you wish securing freight insurance were as easy as booking loads?
Reliance Partners thought so. The trucking insurance and InsurTech leader now offers utilization or Usage-Based Insurance (RUBI) coverage that can be booked on a per-load basis. This new way of booking ensures you receive just the amount of coverage needed, when you need it.
RUBI piqued the interest of FreightWaves’ Timothy Dooner and Michael Vincent, so the WHAT THE TRUCK?!? duo welcomed Graham Gonzales, Director of Strategic Accounts at Reliance Partners, to the show to explain the concept in further detail.
“Usage-based insurance is used where a shipper, motor carrier or freight broker is trying to get adequate coverage on either a strange commodity that’s typically excluded or for a really high value load,” Gonzales said. “We’re providing coverage so that no one goes underinsured.”
Reliance Partners offers RUBI lines of coverage for primary and excess cargo, truckload, less-than-truckload, and third party trailer leasing/interchange, with usage-based excess auto liability in the works for domestic, cross-border and international freight.
Let’s say you’re trying to win a shipper’s business, Gonzales explained. You’re tasked with moving a million-dollar load, but your carrier pool, for the most part, is full of carriers with cargo limits of $100,000. What’s your next move?
“[Carriers] can quickly plug into a program or a spreadsheet the commodity values, which will then provide an instant insurance quote that they can buy at that moment,” Gonzales said. “Some programs take less than a minute to book. Others, you can just book them whenever it’s convenient and then be billed the next month.”
Gonzales said what makes RUBI so awesome is that motor carriers, freight brokers and shippers can use it to cover nearly any piece of their supply chain.
In terms of 3PLs, Gonzales said that Reliance’s RUBI program is helping 3PLs increase capacity within capacity that already exists.
“We’re able to utilize that carrier pool of $100,000-cargo coverage carriers, which is very standard, and have them move more loads above that limit,” he said, explaining the perks of allowing for carrier pools to include high-value cargo. “[Reliance] is brokering everyone working together in a safe and more efficient way, and with different commodities and load values that were previously kind of unattainable for smaller brokerages and carriers.”
Asked why it’s taken so long for insurance companies to offer streamlined coverage like RUBI, Gonzales explained that price plays a major role. Compared to a $6,000 to $10,000 contingent cargo policy a typical insurance company receives from, say a smaller broker, it’d take a couple months of a RUBI policy to equal the same price for coverage.
“So it’s not been a priority for a lot of these bigger insurers,” Gonzales said. “Meanwhile, smaller, more agile and tech-minded insurance companies are specifically targeting the segment in that they’re actually winning a huge amount of market share.”
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