Lot management and risk management are intertwined — is your dealership doing enough?
Running car dealerships isn’t supposed to be a “risky business,” but we all know that with the multitude of factors that we must deal with every day, it really can be.
All CADA 360 programs assist dealers with managing one form or another of risk. Employee Benefits, Drive HR, Garage Insurance, Retirement Savings, Home and Auto Insurance, and Security Services.
It’s important to assess your Garage Insurance and consider how your risk profile looks in the eyes of your garage insurance provider. It can be improved with the implementation of lot management devices such as the one offered by CADA 360 Security Services — powered by RecovR. Auto theft and tracking inventory has never been more important in the eyes of the insurance companies. With auto theft at the dealer level expanding beyond major urban centres, dealers need to take note.
“In response to a need from our dealers, CADA sought out the best product for our dealers and launched CADA 360 Security Services,” said Michael Psotka, CADA’s CFO and Director of Member Services. “We partnered with the leading provider of dealership lot management and stolen vehicle recovery technology called RecovR to help our dealers manage their lot and inventory risks and to help curb rising insurance premiums.”
RecovR’s risk management approach is about more than installing high-tech devices to help recover stolen vehicles. It provides dealerships with around the clock supervision and tracking of the movement of all their vehicles, including new, used, demo units — and even those that are offsite.
The insurance carriers who underwrite garage insurance programs for dealers appreciate this extra layer of security and loss prevention technology, said Paul Embrack, National Underwriting Manager at HUB International, the approved insurance broker for the CADA 360 Garage Insurance Program.
“They look favourably on their dealer clients who take these extra measures to run secure operations. Anyone that has well-established rules, procedures, and controls is viewed as a preferred risk — and that’s how underwriters will view anyone with RecovR,” said Embrack.
Embrack said their research shows that 20 per cent of the stolen vehicle claims they get from dealerships are from vehicles that weren’t even at the dealership. He said that number has also been rising. In 2015 the percentage of stolen vehicles that were stolen away from the dealership was only 10.5 per cent of all vehicles stolen. It rose to 32 per cent during the pandemic and has remained above 20 per cent since.
Christopher Schouten, Senior Marketing Director for Kudelski IoT the parent company of RecovR, said using geo-fencing, the company’s technology can be used to identify and track the movement and locations of vehicles at the dealership, in different parts of the dealership, and at third party locations.
The geo-fencing, he explains, is set up with certain geographic zones, and for specific times. So, for example, if a vehicle with a RecovR device installed leaves the dealership lot after hours, it will trigger an alert to the dealership’s designated team members 24/7.
From there, the dealership can track the vehicle’s location in real-time and then provide a link to law enforcement. “Part of the success of our theft recovery is really the empowerment of dealers to be able to not take matters into their own hands, but know that it’s going to make working with law enforcement so easy that there’s no reason not to do it,” he said.
Schouten said the wireless RecovR devices are easy to install, but that any good theft recovery system has to be embedded into systems, processes and people. “We go out with our trainers and product specialists and show the people who are going to be responsible for installing RecovR how to do it,” said Schouten. “All you do is scan the bottom of the device, type in the last four digits of the VIN number, which has been preloaded from inventory into our system, and ‘boom,’ it’s paired and you’re done.”
Schouten said one of their large dealer group customers that has 250 locations replaced their entire manual inventory management system, which consisted of daily lot walkthroughs and inventory controls with the RecovR lot management system. “Just the savings on staff hours completely paid for the solution for them, so that’s one of the benefits,” he said. “The other benefit is when vehicles are stolen, and it doesn’t matter where they are stolen from, you can find them because of our theft recovery system.”
Schouten said that globally, the company has a 91 per cent stolen vehicle recovery rate, and they have countless customer success stories from dealer clients that have had significant numbers of vehicles recovered with the technology.
One dealer client in British Columbia had five cars stolen, and four were recovered, including a $100k plus luxury vehicle recovered at the Port of Montreal. “These are professional thieves who know how to steal cars, yet they had no idea that the RecovR technology was in those vehicles,” said Schouten.
Schouten said installing the devices on a dealership’s inventory can have a direct financial impact on their garage insurance costs. Having the system in place means vehicles can be located and recovered more quickly, which reduces possible vehicle damage or total loss.
Schouten said he knows of one Canadian dealer who lost a pickup truck worth more than $100,000 who decided not to even make an insurance claim. “He ended up eating the cost because he didn’t want the premiums to go up or to get canceled. So clearly, this is a very expensive problem, both in terms of loss of inventory as well as in insurance claims and the risk of potential cancellation as well,” said Schouten.
“The best advice I can give you is to contact your Hub International broker, or if you are not a member of CADA 360 Garage Insurance, contact CADA and we will put you into contact with RecovR and/or a member of the HUB Insurance Team. They can explain to you the benefits you could receive, financially and operationally, if you adopt RecovR as part of your operations,” said CADA’s Psotka.
