Today’s fast-paced freight landscape demands all things be instantaneous. Thankfully, advancements in technology and innovations in approach have made keeping pace easier than ever.
Utilization- or usage-based insurance (UBI) presents a new way of quoting and securing coverage, and this model has made its way into the transportation and logistics sector with Reliance Partners at the forefront. Freight insurance can now be booked on a per-load basis and distributed through a transportation management system (TMS) or load board.
Insurance and InsurTech leader Reliance Partners is making headway with its wide array of usage-based logistics insurance solutions, which aim to increase operational efficiency, reduce costs, mitigate cargo and other types of risk.
Reliance Partners offers UBI lines of coverage for primary and excess cargo, truckload, less-than-truckload, and trailer interchange, with usage-based excess auto liability in the works for domestic, cross-border and international freight. Through application programming interface-enabled solutions (API), Reliance Partners can integrate directly into your TMS, allowing for instant insurance with as little as a screen tap.
A freight UBI model looks to replicate the tremendous growth seen in the automotive insurance market, where it’s estimated that the UBI market will be worth $125.7 billion by 2027.
Sahej Singh, director of business intelligence and strategy, dives into Reliance Partners’ reengineering of freight insurance. “With utilization-based insurance, instead of always paying for excess cargo, for instance, why not pay for the coverage only when you need it?”
Reliance Partners’ domestic, cross border and international UBI coverages are designed for freight brokers and freight forwarders on a per-load basis; freight forwarders, and even motor carriers in need of a one-off load, according to Singh. In addition, he highlights Reliance’s ability to service clients regardless of how advanced they are technologically.
“If you’re a general freight broker or freight forwarder that doesn’t yet have the technology systems in place to handle APIs or anything of that nature, we saw that to be quite an underserved market in terms of the other offerings out there,” Singh said, noting that flexible, pre-structured insurance policies can be attained through a manual reporter, which customers can use to list a few data points regarding their loads on a weekly basis.
Its UBI and API-enabled solutions not only leverage best-in-class primary and excess coverage when you need it, but they also make billing and claims management seamless and transparent through their claims portal. Singh explains that Reliance Partners services claims directly through the underwriter and can provide in-house support via phone or email as well, offering brokers, forwarders and shippers peace of mind through the entire freight insurance process.
Through its recent acquisition of Borderless Coverage, a cross-border consulting and insurance provider, Reliance Partners is not only focused on better protecting the industry’s insurance gaps in cross border logistics, but has also expanded its UBI offerings and consulting services to both cross-border and international freight. To better reflect its cross-border acquisition, Reliance Partners has plans to rebrand its usage-based insurance platform to Reliance UBI, as the trucking industry’s all-encompassing UBI solution.
“We’re putting an emphasis on the per-shipment usage model; there’s very few commodities that we cannot cover,” Singh said. “This approach towards insurance is innovative and completely customer-centric; you can get the coverage you need for your freight and only pay for it when you need it in a very simple, transparent and cost effective manner.”
He continued, “Customers don’t even need to have the technology to benefit from our usage-based insurance; though we have the capability to integrate into technology systems via API, such that TMS, load boards and digital brokers can enable their carriers to purchase excess cargo, for example, on a per-load basis at the click of a button.”
Reach out to Sahej Singh (sahej.singh@reliancepartners.com) and Reliance Partners to learn more about its usage-based trucking insurance offerings.
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