The back end that profitability is really taken off. You know, the 20 years I've seen that remember back when it first started, the target PVR was try to hit a thousand, right? And that was the big number. There's a secret profit weapon for dealerships across the nation. And this man has a front row view to where it's all headed. Today I'm speaking with Todd Sands, senior vice president at CNA National a leading provider of finance and insurance products for the automotive industry. Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. But before we dive into the show, this episode is brought to you by CDK Global. CDK Global has been empowering nearly 15,000 dealers with the tools and technology. They need to build deeper relationships with customers. Their team is keenly aware of the state of dealership technology. And while many vendors promise seamless experiences between your CRM, DMS, digital retail and fixed ops, most of these bolt-on solutions tend to break workflows and cause more harm than good.
The back end of profitability is really taking off. You may remember 20 years ago when the target PVR was trying to reach a thousand, right? That was a big number. There is a secret profit weapon for dealerships across the nation, and this man has a front row seat to where it's all heading. Today, I am speaking with Todd Sands, Senior Vice President at CNA National, a leading provider of finance and insurance products for the automotive industry. Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. But before we get into the show, this episode is brought to you by CDK Global. CDK Global has been empowering nearly 15,000 dealers with the tools and technology they need to build deeper relationships with customers. Their team is highly aware of the state of dealership technology, and while many vendors promise seamless experiences between your CRM, DMS, digital retail, and fixed ops, most of these add-on solutions tend to disrupt workflows and cause more harm than good.
That is why CDK has launched a new dealership experience platform. This new integrated software consists of everything you need to operate a dealership officially while delivering an unparalleled experience to your customers. Basically, everything working together, not separate, one system to run your dealership as opposed to 10. CDK developed it with an outside and approach listening to dealers every step of the way. You can learn more about CDK's dealership experience platform by visiting CDK Global dot com slash DXP or clicking the link in the show notes below. This episode is also brought to you by Upstart. Upstart partners with dealers to digitize and connect their online in store and financing process to create the car buying experience today's customers expect.
Backed by trusted OEMs, Upstart helps dealers sell more cars efficiently, speeding up processes to boost profits and enhance customer satisfaction. With integrated finance capabilities powered by AI technology, Upstart's connected platform enables consumers to shop from anywhere, then seamlessly transition in store and complete the deal digitally, creating a hassle free purchase path that benefits both dealers and buyers. For a brighter car buying future, visit upstart.com slash dealers. That's upstart.com slash dealers or click the link in the show notes below. Lastly, this episode is also brought to you by CNA National.
I'd like to thank CNA National for coming on as a guest and also supporting podcast. First of all, I think the one thing that stuck out to me about you and your career at CNA is how long you've been there. Very rare to see that nowadays. I mean, over two decades. What gives them like, are you just to build differently? Like what's going on over here?
Well, I'm naturally inclined. I'm a loyalist when you look it down deep and a lot of it has to come come back to the culture of the organization. You know, I when I started here, just the people I'm surrounded with on a daily basis, work hard, get the job done. But I've also watched the company grow over time. When I first started here, there were about a hundred employees here in Scottsdale with our division. And now we're bumping up over over 300 plus employees and just to watch the organization grow and to see what we've been able to accomplish over all these years and to see some of the new people come into the organization.
But, you know, I'm just a green P actually. When you look at my tenure at the company, there's a VP of our. Oh, I look. Yeah. I did some proofing. I looked through the page and everything. I saw I saw there was a lady that just crossed like 40 years at the company. I'm like, whoa. Yeah. She's on my day. That's so there you go. I did my homework.
Before we get, and we're going to get into some, you know, the details of just, you know, F and I, VSC, I've, you know, vehicle service contracts, warranties. I mean, there's a ton of this cost on that. And I, I've lately, I have been doing more, you know, deep dives into this type of content. I just offer, you know, a wider perspective for the audience. Before we even get into that, I'm curious to know. You know, briefly, like how has, you know, the call it like back and then just automotive in general evolved since, you know, you've started in this industry.
And I'm talking from the perspective of, you know, today we are the dealer, right? Much more optimizing for an even split. Call it at, at most, I would say an even split between front and profit, right? Profit on the vehicle and back end profit on, you know, on ancillary products. But what have you seen? How has that changed? I'm just curious to know from since you started this industry, right? What have been like the biggest changes that you've seen happen there?
Man, you know, 20, 20 plus years will give you a lot of answers to that. But, you know, really what you've seen is the entrepreneurs in our space, you know, continue to bring new products to market in relation to the F and I office and also on the front end for sales opportunities. But, you know, when I first started, everything was paper. So that's how long it goes back that there was no such thing as e-contract. And everything was generated via paper, paper rate charts and all that fluth with those F and I offices.
哥们,你知道,20多年的经验将会给你很多答案。但你知道的,我们这个领域的企业家们不断推出与 F 和 I 办公室相关的新产品,也为销售机会在前端带来新产品。但是你知道的,当我刚开始时,所有东西都是纸质的。所以可以看出,以前没有电子合同这种东西。一切都是纸质的,纸质的利率表格和所有那些与 F 和 I 办公室有关的东西。
And then the culmination of the products came on. You know, you started with a basic extended warranty or extended service contract and you had the gap offerings that were out there and some basic tire and wheel. And then all these additional bundle type products or ancillary products started to come to market. And, you know, the industry really took off with the array of offerings, right? You've got vehicle protection products from interior exterior protection.
So they really started to expand dramatically creating more opportunities for the buyers to have more protection for their vehicles, you know, based on their needs and their wants and at that rapid pace, what we've also seen is you mentioned the back end, right? You got the front end profit, the back end. That profitability is really taken off, you know, the 20 years I've seen it. Remember back when it first started, the target PVR was trying to hit a thousand, right? And that was the big number.
And now if you're hitting a thousand, wait, just to speak, that was, that was the target profit you're referring to on a vehicle or on ancillary products. PVR per vehicle retail. Correct. But are we talking about? Are we talking about total or we're talking about front end back end? What are we talking about?
Yeah, back end total. Yeah. That was back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking 15 years ago plus. Yeah. So, and then what do you see today? Like what are dealers targeting and back end profit? Well, that's, that's taken a turn over here the last last few years, right? I mean, if you look back two years ago, three years ago, coming into COVID when the demand was very high and the supply was low, I think those numbers were up significantly, right? And we were starting to see that back pedal just a little bit.
But we've seen anywhere ranges anywhere from 2000 to 3000 in a general, in a general PVR. You know, depends on the size of the size of the organization, the makeup of their lineup, you know, geographical components, but seems to be a good steady number. Seems to be a good target out there that is a number that people are eyeballing to say, you know, 2000 PVR is an ideal number. What's separating the 2000, the 2000 dealerships to the 3000 dealerships? Ah, there's a slippery slope on that one. But a number of things could be a component of that. You know, a lot of it comes down to the people that may have been there a long time, the training, the processes back end that are, they're involved with the systems they may be using to bring them to start and finish. And it's also the way they're interacting with their customers and the needs. I mean, I think that the $3,000 PVR, as you see some of these vehicles now, MSRP of 65,000 plus, you're starting to see a higher demand for that protection and the need for some of these products in the, in the F and I office based on what we're seeing. Yeah, I actually haven't thought about that, right? Which just vehicles costing more higher percentage of someone's disposable monthly income sort of makes sense. You're taking more risk. You're going to be more inclined to want protection. You know, I did see, I think I mentioned it's on a previous podcast, but I did see that an article is stated again, I want to say this was from CDK Global about Gen Z being like incredibly risk averse in their purchase and just having a higher rate, a tax rate on back end products, which I just found fascinating because, you know, we went for, we really went from Gen Z's not going to buy cars to Gen Z buys cars. They do it in a dealership and they're buying more products for their cars. Like it's quite the turn, huh? Yeah, it's quite fascinating.
但我们在一般 PVR 中看到的范围通常是从 2000 到 3000。你知道,这取决于组织的规模、他们的产品线组成、地理位置等因素,但似乎是一个稳定的好数字。人们眼中的理想数字似乎是 2000 PVR。是什么让 2000 和 3000 家经销商有所不同呢?啊,这是一个棘手的问题。但其中可能有很多因素。很大一部分取决于那些可能在那里很长时间的人、培训、他们所使用的系统中涉及的后端流程,以及他们与客户互动的方式和需求。我认为,随着现在一些车辆的 MSPR 超过 65,000 美元,你会开始看到对保护需求更高,根据我们所看到的情况,F 和 I 办公室对一些产品的需求也在增加。是的,我实际上还没有考虑到这一点对吧?由于车辆价格更高,相对于某人的可支配月收入百分比更高,需要更多的保护。你会更倾向于要保护。我看到,我想我之前在一个播客中提到过,但我看到一篇文章再次提到了这个,我想这是来自 CDK 全球关于 Gen Z 在购买过程中非常害怕风险,并且在后端产品上有更高税率的文章,我觉得这很有趣,因为我们真的从“Gen Z 不会购买车辆”到“Gen Z 购买车辆”,他们在经销商购买车辆,并为其车辆购买更多的产品。这真是一个惊人的转变,对吧?是的,这非常有趣。
So I remember seeing the same thing when they were talking about the Gen Z, they weren't going to be buying cars and going to be relying on Uber and Lyft and different means for transportation and how that paradigm has changed. And now to see that same publication that they're buying more products and more interested and more protection products, it's quite fascinating to see that change and the correlation between the generation and others. Correct. So, so what are you doing at CNA, right? What is, what do you focus on? The team here is really focused on, you know, the, the F and I product offerings, the training to the dealership staffs and then really the customer service experience. You know, a big emphasis where we focus our align our strategy is just trying to make sure that that customer experience all the way through is in a good place so that CSI stores are at an acceptable level based on our performance here in Scottsdale with our claims administration. But also the, when we look at the customer, we've got a customer journey that starts with, we've got a, we've got a dealer customer, right? Whose names on the building? And then we've got the folks at the dealership level all the way through the different departments from F and I to sales to service that our customers as well. And then the end use with the consumer, you know, it's very important that in these days with, you know, the social media, the better business ratings and reviews that are out there that, you know, adhere to what the customer's expectations are. I mean, we were just, you know, I just talked a second ago about how the cost of vehicles have gone up so much. I mean, you get to a point where a customer's expectation is to have a contract that covers what's saying that says it's going to cover and make sure that they're buying experiences, because ultimately you want that customer going back to the dealership, right? For additional work and for additional service work and buying a repeat vehicle from them and continuing the life cycle of the customer journey.
Yeah, I'm curious to know, you know, based on your data and you have lots of it, so we can, you know, hit this in several different ways. But do you see major geographical differences in like rate of adoption for products based on where you are in a country, right? Like give us some of that insider insight, you know, to where do you see nuances in terms of actual customer behavior? I'm asked you earlier about the, you know, what separates the 3,000 dealership from the 2000, you know, you mentioned process, which of course I totally agree with, but I'm curious to know, like, you know, anything else that you're seeing there.
Well, you definitely see a demographic split. So I'll give you a couple examples. When you look at Metro cities, so you mentioned what Philadelphia, right? And here we're in Phoenix, Phoenix Metro. You look in Chicago Metro, Atlanta, New York, Dallas, and you can go into some of those larger Metro markets. You've got a far larger customer base, a lot more competition, right? At the retail level, dealers competing with each other significantly. You've got some of the, you know, some of the publics, a lot of the privates.
And so what you'll, you'll tend to see is a different, a different metric there on the performance. You've got a lot of folks that have been in the business a long time and then you get into maybe more of the surrounding rural areas, right? And so you get into some of the small private mom and pop dealership areas, you know, the customer experience across the board is very important to all of them. But you start to see a little bit of maybe a transition and change is the release of the PBR, maybe it also the products that they're promoting and selling through their F&I office. So they all change, right?
They've got options on what they want to sell at the dealership from a vehicle service, contrast gap all the way down into those ancillary product offerings from the bundles, the painless den repair, the interior exterior. So there's a myriad of products that can be offered and based on the makeup of the, the makes that there's someone as well. So there's a number of factors that you'll, you'll see that tie into the ultimate performance at the dealership level.
So talk to us about products, right? Are there like up and coming products right now? Are there products that are maybe, you know, going out of style? What are you seeing on that end? The product, the product mix out there is, is constantly changing, evolving. You know, there's always, there's always someone that's on the front end, that is a leader and finding that, that new product out there. And I don't want to say widgets. It's not a widget. I mean, there's every product is brought to market by the folks that operate in this space.
They all bring value to the consumer. So as you look into the product offerings, you've got a lot of the traditional products, extended service contracts or vehicle service contracts. You've got, you know, the gap, you've got these tired wheeled products. And then you start to see a little, some, some different products out there. Like you're seeing, um, etch for catalytic converters that you're seeing out there, that has popped up in the last, you know, can you, can you explain that to anyone that's not familiar with this? Can you just explain how this works? Well, with the, with the significant theft rate of the catalytic converters, that has been taking place throughout the, throughout the country. Um, and that being utilized, you know, there was an opportunity to take an edge type product, right? And stencil it on the catalytic converter and create a, a warranty product or assurance protection for that theft that was happening.
And there's some heavy dominance in different areas of the country, but, ultimately it became an opportunity where there was value to the, to the consumer, right? To have that protection in light of the potential theft of a catalytic converter. Yeah. I can't tell you how many cats I've replaced. In my time as a dealer, like I literally can't even count. It's just absolutely, it's absolutely absurd. And this goes back to the last few years you're seeing that. I mean, there was definitely a massive uptick in the last couple of years, for sure. But just thinking back to like the amount of times, you know, well, you know what vehicles were notorious for getting their cat stolen.
Do you know what I'm thinking? I'm not about there with me. Mitsubishi Outlander. Ah, meat, the Outlanders, man, these things, because here's why, right? They were tall enough. They had like a very easy cat to steal, right? So they were tall, just tall enough to where people could like roll right under them or, you know, slide underneath. And these things were like super easy to steal.
So I'm telling you, like the amount of times that I woke up in the morning and I, I get a text like, Hey, outlander cats are stolen. It got to the point where we have to take all of our outlanders and we have lots of them. We're selling lots of them. We have to park them completely off site in a gated lot. And it was still advertised online just so that, you know, like we wouldn't leave them on a lot anymore. I mean, to that extent, we just, we couldn't do it because the Outlanders and the Tori is for getting their cat stolen. I don't know with the latest models, if anything has changed, but man, we spent a lot of money on that.
But anyways, edge again, like, you know, fascinating product. And it's funny how like, you know, can come up with insurance for almost anything. Yeah, you absolutely can. And there's, and there's, oh, and that's the beauty of our, of our business. And, you know, with the, the frontiers that are out there, you're always going to have something new coming to market and, you know, traditionally you just take a look. And we tend to be fairly conservative in our approach and just look at for best in class products. We don't necessarily go after the widgets that maybe, you know, the, the hot, the hot ticket for a period of time and look at just a longer term view, you know, stability and making sure that the performance standards are there more than the tables, table stakes type products.
But again, it's just a matter of what, what those dealers and producers out there are really looking for to compliment their lineup of product offerings. And like you said, with the mitts is what they're seeing with the, with that, right on the converters.
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All right, Todd. So I want to shift topics. Tell me a little bit about reinsurance. Um, you know, if you could just provide like a super brief overview, because I'm going to assume most people listening are familiar or use it. But I really want to focus on how and if any way you see it evolving right now, right? So let's just start, start us off with like a super brief overview, state of reinsurance with the deal ships.
Yeah, sure. I mean, look, re, reinsurance is something that spun off from the insurance industry into our space and in, in the automotive space. It was geared up back in the 70s. Um, when you had a credit life, A&H disability, and then the, the onset of extended warranties came into the market and took off. But a rapid pace, but there have been multiple types of reinsurance structures that are out there and not all of it is reinsurance. I mean, there's dealer owned warranty companies. There's a retrospective program. So there's a myriad of ways for, you know, the, the dealers to get involved with this, but ultimately what's happening is they're participating in the back end insurance profitability, right?
There's a reinsurance. It's just a transfer of risk from one insurer to another. And so when that takes place, there becomes a favorable, um, position for that owner operator to participate in that, in that back end. And what you've seen is over the course of 20 plus years, at least that I've witnessed is you've seen changes and slight tweaks to the programs that are out there, whether it's where they're located, which would be like a domicile. Um, obviously you've got the tax regs that are constantly changing, right? Um, based on the US Treasury and the IRS on how they, how they viewed the different structures and what rulings they may come out with or that they might have proposed. Um, and then it ties to the overall performance of the investment markets.
So as the stock market goes, you know, a big part of the investment, excuse me, the insurance market is tied to the yield, right on your investments as well. So you've got the combination of all those taking place, um, to favor, you know, getting some of the insurance proceeds to the, those dealer owner operators and, and their partners at the dealership and ownership level. Yeah. So classic case of like vertical integration where, you know, a dealer, like you, you're obviously selling tons of warranties. Why not participate in that underwriting profit or loss? Of course, if it doesn't work out.
So there's a couple quick questions here, right? Like I'm familiar with one type of, you know, I've experienced with this, but what is, what are the different types of reinsurance in the market today? You mentioned like dealer owned warranty companies. So can you just break that down for us? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So you're going to get into a couple, a couple of different basic structures, high level. So, um, first one would be like a dealer on a warranty company. So dealer would ultimately set up their own obligor entity, uh, which is the company that's obligated behind the scenes to perform. They file the product of the state level and then they participate, um, with their product in that company and that structure of a period of time with, you know, certain tax benefits, certain investment income returns or investment returns.
And then ultimately at the end of the rainbows, when these contracts earn outright and mature, you've got claims being charged against it. Whatever's left goes into some form of surplus or what's referred to as like an underwriting profit. Um, so that would be one structure that, uh, is prevalent out there. And then you have, uh, another, which would be considered a producer owned reinsurance company sometimes referred to as a, uh, US domiciled. It's like an 831 B, uh, reinsurance company traditionally, where it's a smaller, it's got a premium cap to it where you can only write so much annual written premium, uh, net written premium, but it gives the, um, dealer the opportunity to participate in all F and I products, right?
It's just not extended service contracts. It's the products that are available to go into that company. And you know, it's, I, I like to correlate it to, uh, you start up, but you're starting to insurance business is what you're doing. You're starting a small insurance company that, um, is set up and, you know, traditionally there's a favorable domiciled. There's multiple domiciles that are available for the dealers to use in that structure. Does that matter Todd? Does that matter? Like where he's right? Again, so you're a dealer. You're selling all these warranties. Why not be an insurer as well? Cause these things are clearly very profitable. So you set up this company. Now, when you say domicile, right? Where the company's actually domiciled. Like does that actually matter where someone domiciles these reinsurance companies?
It does. It does. I mean, for example, if you want to do something here in, in Arizona, the cost to domicile the company, you know, back in the 70s and 80s, it was a Arizona was a hotbed for these types of structures, but as the cost goes up, right? The operating costs, the annual costs, um, the licensing for the company as those have gone up, um, other domiciles historically have come into play there. At one point, there was, uh, still possibly out there. Nivas, you've got the Turks and Caicos and then you've got some other domiciles here, here, the U S that are being used and the primary basis there. It's from a, from a cost perspective, you know, keep the expense, annual operating expenses, um, to minimize those, uh, in order for the company to, to operate efficiently and at the maximum profitability. And that's why these domiciles really come into play. Cause again, you can go here at here in Arizona and other states, but you can have some significant cost, startup costs to get them going and ongoing operating costs. So a big part of that is this cost structure.
What are you seeing as like the average loss ratio nowadays on these companies? And I'm also curious to know if like it's rising declining. If you're seeing any trends there, uh, absolutely have seen a trend and up, up tick in the last, um, say go on about last 18 months or so, because we've seen as an industry, well, gosh, we've seen parts and labor escalate significantly in the course of, you know, really mid 22 through 23. I mean, there's been a number of publications as of late and different editorials, industry editorials that have alluded to that with escalations and in the labor rates, right? Uh, it's part of that's tied back into, uh, retaining good techs. So you've seen labor rates go up significantly.
Some of it has been driven at the state level with different legislation on the labor rate side. And the main thing is the, is the parts, um, uh, the reimbursement on that. I mean, a traditional R O in our space is probably, you're looking at maybe 50, 50 parts to labor. Sometimes 60, 40, but when you look at what's going on with the parts pricing, then I give you an example pre COVID basic traditional engine assembly was sitting around 4,600, right? Just for the, for the total, for the total claim parts and labor. And you look at that in 23, it's jumped up to 7,900. Um, so you've seen some significant increase. So that's an engine assembly at, like, give us a little bit more context. So your turn to like just average between all franchise and independent dealerships.
Yeah. That's a, that's a number that's, um, just a, a combined based on a general domestic, um, lineup. So take a, and we're talking about, we're talking about a used engine. Uh, well, at this point, you know, the, the procurement of parts, you know, pretty much the same because of some of the supply challenges that are out there. So whether it's used, but, you know, whether it's like kind of quality used or even a, a remand traditionally they're coming in at that point. Wow. So from 4,600 to 7,900, that's how much the average cost of an engine assembly has gone up in the US. Yeah. And that's just, that was just a general number that I, that I grabbed. I was looking at, um, in relation to some of the fried trends. What's that?
Yeah. I said, that's definitely outpace inflation. Yeah. And that's the, I think that's the challenge. It has the industry we're, we're going to be facing here in the next, next few years is, um, no one, if you would have gone back and we had this conversation in late 21, and we were talking about what we would foresee to be the downstream effects of COVID and the supply and all things that were happening. I don't, I don't think either one of us would have said, yeah, we're going to see parts and labor jumped by anywhere from 20 to 30% over the course of a year period of time. I mean, if we would have all known that we all would have hedged against that with, you know, premium adjustments to the, the pricing of the policies to hedge against that for the wellbeing of the dealers back end. So yeah.
So we've, we've seen a rise in the loss ratio. We look at the L 12 and it's been taking out, you know, it depends on the location. What do you look at the what? What is it? We look at a 12 month rolling to see this kind of the trends over your basis to look at it to forecast and hedge against it. And what are the, what are the specific changes when you said you're seeing a rise? Like what does specifically the rise look like?
So we're seeing a across the, across the industry where we're seeing a change in some of it is associated with the use cars as an example. You notice over the last few years, the use cars have aged a little bit in the dealers inventory. They've got a little bit more higher mileage. So we're seeing an older use, use car, higher mileage use cars coming in with the protection, which tends to get into a higher risk area based on the condition of that vehicle. And you're starting to see some of the newer, newer cars come back in the market with the, with the sales cycle, which is, is created, you know, some of that new, new business coming into its life cycle. But across the board, you'll see a, a change in, and the loss performance all the way down at the make and model level. You know, some, some of the makes perform a little bit better than others.
Um, but you do, you do, you do have the demographic, the demographic component of it, you know, location, geographic. I mean, just recently we had a claim get called in. Uh, it wasn't that one of our online or issuing customers, but it was considered just a transient repair. And to just give you an idea, the, the labor rate that was being used was over $300 an hour. Um, there's being called. Yeah. So yeah, at some point it's, it's going to, it's going to need to give a little bit, uh, in relation to what's happening with the, the general consumer base out there, right?
I mean, you get some costs that are going to start out running the disposable income that's available to these consumers to afford some of these, these repairs, if they don't have the protection products. And how are you as, you know, a warranty company, how are you dealing with this? Right? When you see $300 labor rate, clearly, when assume you have a cap somewhere in between there, like how are you navigating through that?
And there's a lot of, there's a lot of levers there that we, uh, we can work through on our own. We, we do have the actuaries, right? Those are folks that price all this stuff. The folks in the back end that look at, you know, predictive, what's coming in the, in the future. So we'll do an annual price adjustment, uh, premium adjustment, uh, based on where it's needed and warranted based on what we've seen with the trends. So, you know, that's a part of it. Um, but one of the, one of the things that we've, we're very fortunate is that we've got, um, our entire planes, claims staff here, they're made up of all, uh, X, odd mode of fixed ops personnel, service advisors, service managers, service riders.
So we've got some eyes and ears on the back end here that can, and kind of look through the, the call and get a sense for, uh, is there a multiple line item claim that is really needed here? And so they'll, they'll be able to kind of triage that up front, but then we've got a lot of systems on the back end now that we've introduced on, um, streamline in the processes and then trying to get more predictive and what's coming with the data and the analytics. Um, cause that's, you know, the, the future state of where this business is going to go with the predictive and what, I don't want to say AI, but you know, that's potentially a component of, um, what's going to be happening here to, to get smarter with the millions of millions of data records that we have, um, to really glean that information and predict what's going to happen with the certain makes and models short term and long term on the performance side.
So speaking of predictive and what's going to happen, obviously, we've seen the rise of electric vehicles over the last couple of years and a market share has grown. We're going through a bit of a cooling period now, uh, which we know, but needless to say, there's more EVs on the streets. Um, I'm talking to use cardiillars who are, you know, in more of the subprime space who are feasting on the use, the visa right now, just given the tax credit, which sort of serves as a down payment for the consumer. Um, you can get, can get applied directly to the vehicle. So anyways, no doubt about it that we're seeing more EVs on the roads. We also know that, you know, there's been, they've been selling very, very slowly on the new side. I am that that's been a struggle for more dealers. I'm curious to know from you, how are you approaching EVs from an insurance perspective, right? Like what is different and, you know, what are you building to anticipate a future where the reality is there's going to be more EVs on the road. Um, so how are you, how are you navigating through that?
We started that, we started that journey well over two years ago. Um, we went out and we entered into a relationship with a company that actually tears down EVs. Um, tears them down to just the cabin chassis and we were, we've been doing some deep diving into the makeup of these things on how they're built, how they're designed, what the internal plumbing really looks like in them. Um, and you're, you're right. They're, they're completely different from the ice field, completely. I mean, someone even say it's not an electric vehicle. It's an electric device, right on wheels. Cause when you look at them, it's, it's rather daunting when you see how they're being, um, how they're being built in a sheer amount of, um, electronics that are, um, built into these units.
So we went back and we entered in this relationship and we've been doing some discovery. Um, and we took our time on it to understand if you're going to build a EV service contract and an extended warranty, you know, build it specific to the EV space. So instead of taking our traditional service contract and just putting some additional language into it, um, for basic coverage, we expanded that. We went to a pure EV only service contract, but by doing that, we also took into consideration, you know, a lot of, a lot of times the often concern is my, my battery, right? You got the range anxiety, but what's going to happen when I have to replace that battery? Well, I think federally mandated 800 is out there on most of these batteries and excess of that in some instances.
So looking at the way we adopted the coverage and we built it, we went into having a contract that has, um, coverage without battery in case the buyer doesn't want that protection or case they decide to keep it for less than eight years or less than a hundred thousand miles. So we put a lot of thought into the coverage. Um, but then we really took it a step further here internally and we started the process with, um, our claims adjusters, you know, because one of the things that I've noticed is it is comments such a fast pace, the EV segment, right? And they, and the projection and hundreds of units in the years to come and the rapid pace of the way these vehicles are going to be coming to market and they're going to be delivered.
But oftentimes I think there's just a, there's a discomfort or an unfamiliarity with a, how they're equipped, how they're built, but then potentially how they're going to be serviced through some of these, some of these dealerships. You know, there's investment, a significant investment that dealers are being asked to make into their operation to position for the servicing of these vehicles, um, down the road. Um, so we, we took a look and we actually brought in, uh, in hired folks specifically for our EV claims area. So when we have calls routed into our system or into our call center, they, if it's an EV, it gets routed to EV specialists. So we have adjusters that are specifically on the EV side, um, to have that expertise and, and that knowledge to help support that experience because there, there are quite a few complexities in relation to those, those vehicles.
And then in addition to that, there's a, there's a lot of training that goes into it. Uh, we built web based training for, for the F and I managers and sales representatives that they could leverage and use about what's different about an EV, but, you know, a big part of it, uh, as an industry that we're all facing is, is getting ourselves educated on these EVs quickly and finding the right folks that we can partner up with to educate ourselves for what's coming. Cause you know, right now it's, what was it? The 8% I believe was the, the latest I saw it was the, yeah. Yeah. So around 8% Yeah. Around eight and I think they're projecting a 24, 25% on market share. Yeah. Mark share in the years that comes up. We have to hedge against that, right? It's not going away. It's just matter how fast it is going to hit us. Are there any non obvious, right?
The obvious risky component here is the battery. Most obvious, most expensive, but is there anything non obvious? Cause it seems at face value, like, you know, these things have, um, you know, certain or they don't have certain components that an ice vehicle has, right? So maybe, you know, obviously you're not changing oil and whatnot. I mean, it's just, it's not like a normal vehicle could say that, Hey, these are maybe cheaper to earn sure in a long term, right? Based on your data, right? What does the insurance look like? And, and I want to qualify that with one thing that based on my understanding from a maintenance perspective, right? Electric vehicles are actually more expensive, partly driven by the tires. Right. So different type of maintenance, but net net.
Tires are, you know, they wear much, much, much quicker and those are expensive. Right. But I want to understand from like a non obvious and sureable item. So there are any major risks that you see based on your data with experience with EVs. Sure. Yeah. It's a little, it's a little early, right? There in the infant stages with some of the EVs that have come to market, but you're going to find, I'll give you an example of one thing that stood out to us. Because you've got motors in there that are very expensive. You've got converters and again, that you mentioned the battery, but the sheer volume of wiring harnesses that are in some of these. I mean, this facility we went to, the F-150 Lightning had five times the amount of wiring harnesses than a traditional F-150. Just to give you an idea. You know, those are, those are components of it. There's a lot more underneath these, these, the hood, so to speak, than, than we're realizing, I think at this point, just generally speaking. But I'll give you an example of something that stood out to us. So we've been, we've been covering EVs underneath a program we have dating back to 2017. Now, take that for granted in 2017. We didn't have as quite as many EVs out there, but there were still, you know, there were the bolts and the leaves and there were still vehicles out there that were electric, but I was looking at, okay, so what is a symptom, right? So we pulled some claims information and we're looking at it. And so living in Arizona, as we've talked about early on, out here, it's hot from April through October. Well, the number one thing that stood out as far as frequency of repairs, meaning the most common repair here in Arizona on electric vehicles, some would say, oh, it must just got to be the battery. Well, it wasn't. It's, it's the AC compressor. And so I thought about why, why would the AC compressor be such a high risk out here in Arizona and walking with our claims manager. And he said, well, let me show you. And we walked down into our parking garage. And we've got a few, you know, there's a few test was here in the building and they don't work for us up. They, you know, they're, they're working with the attorney firm across the way, but we walked through the parking garage and he goes, you hear that Tesla right there? I said, yeah, he said, well, that's, that's the AC running to maintain a certain temperature to keep the battery cool, to ensure efficiency on the battery. So it come to realize that often when it's 115 degrees out here in the summer months, June, July and August, that these ACs are constantly running when these vehicles are parked outside when people are working. So it's significant uptake in just the AC compressors alone. So those are some of the downstream, you know, the effects. That's definitely not obvious. So yeah. No, and that's, that's part of the findings that, you know, as an industry, we're all going to, we're going to realize this down down the road. To your point earlier, our EV is going to break less or more than ISIS. It's yet to be determined, right? They're completely different and we need to get them into a segment where they start to age a little bit and we start to see, you know, a little bit more of the infrastructure nationally with more of these on the road. I mean, right now you got California, Washington or again, in different parts of country that are really, you know, the big producers on the, on the EV side are picking up quite a bit out here in Arizona as well. But as it as it grows, we're all going to learn quite a bit more about the overall performance of these vehicles.
Do you find right now that like dealers are asking you a lot about this or is there any common theme in types of questions that you're fielding from your dealer partners all over the country? Not, not really a common theme. I think the common theme is directionally, you know, where, where, where are these going to be in the next few years? Because, you know, a couple of years ago, we were, all we were talking about is it's going to be 10, 15, 20, 25% of market share and it's slowed down a little bit and, you know, waiting for the demand to pick back up. We'll see it.
So it's going to be interesting to see how it goes up. But I think the biggest thing that we've been finding is, is being able to get training to their personnel and to their teams for when these vehicles come in. And think about a, you've taken an off make, off make electric vehicle into your service department. So you take a Nissan Leaf goes into your, your Ford dealership and you're accustomed to only working off of maybe the Ford F-150, lightning or the Mach E, right? And now you've got to look up and work through what does it look like for, for a Nissan Leaf potentially in order to retain that customer or the sublighted out and send it elsewhere for the repair work.
So, you know, learning on the back end of how these are made and how they are built because it, just like we're seeing with the, the ice segment, a lot of it's just becoming pure replacement. And there's not a lot of repairing going on anymore. A lot of it is just pure replacement on the components and the component groups. These full front end LED displays. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's actually the worst, you know, my, my, with my experience in service. I mean, there's, there's certain things. I mean, man, I remember like the land Rover is like, there's like one little thing broken and I think we had like an evoke or something like one, one tiny thing broke it on the, on the dash. And it's like, oh, got a replace to hold dash or something along these lines. I mean, I can give you a million examples.
Well, yeah, we're seeing the same thing. We're seeing the same thing right now with all the touch screens and you've got folks that are pushing, but it's, it could be climate control. It could be the Bluetooth connectivity. It could be the radio. I mean, it could be a number of, number of things, but bottom line is it's being replaced. It's not like you can repair those. So. No, no, in many cases you can't. And it's, it's terrible. Cause it just, you buy that car and like saying, you know, you're in it for another two grand on one, one component. So I think, you know, many of us have experience with that.
All right. So Todd, just wrapping up. Company's been around for 40 years. You've been there for two decades. I don't want to ask you what the next 20 years looks like. I don't want to go that far. I'll be just thinking about the outlook here for the next couple of years in the light of where the industry's at, in light of all the changes that we're going through with affordability, consumer demand, right? Inflation, right? What's your outlook for the next, next couple of years and how does CNA play into that?
Well, I wish I had a crystal ball to give there the insights. I mean, I wish I had it back in 2000, December of seven, eight, nine, when we went into the Great Recession and came out of that. But, you know, it's a resilient industry period. Um, and there's been ebbs and flows and there's the my short two decades in this business. But it will continue as sustainable. It's just a matter of, you know, when you're doing things the right way and just focusing on the collective way the vehicles are being retailed. I mean, think about how cars being sold today versus the way they were being sold, you know, 10 years ago.
So what does the future of e-commerce or digital retailing look like? Um, you know, it's speculative. Some people will say we're here, but we've been hearing that for years. And where does that go in the future, right? You've got the likes of the carbana that we talked about a little earlier that's fully commerce. So you've got the way the transactions will take place. Um, and the consumers interaction with the, with the dealerships. Um, but long, long term, I think in the next, we'll call 15 to 18 months, we'll, we'll see what Cox and others publish. Um, we should see a nice uptick in the, in, in once interest rates are to take back.
I, I've got a sense that there's a pent up demand out there. A lot of people, at least a lot of my friends and people in my still. Yeah. I mean, I've got a quite a few friends that are out there in the market right now that they're waiting and they're waiting, not just because of interest rates, but they're waiting for the right vehicle to come along. And, and so we'll start to see some of that natural attrition. Like we see every, we see these cycles in our business. And then, you know, on our end on the F and I product related side, it's, it's just looking at making sure that the products are designed correctly for the, the future of the business and the space. I mean, think about the rapid pace in which these things are being developed, the technology, um, the vehicles themselves. You know, when you write these contracts now, you've got to be more thoughtful and mindful about how they're being equipped, um, putting an exclusionary contract out there and saying you're going to cover, you know, virtually anything and everything, um, need to hedge, hedge against that potentially and look at, you know, what's, what are the right things to cover in relation to the vehicles? Because next year, there's going to be something new that an engineer in Detroit or elsewhere is going to come up with that's going to be put into one of these vehicles that no one would have foreseen coming. And then the year after that, and the year after that, so there's going to hit the rapid pace is what's been amazing to me, that the industry is moving.
On the engineering side of it, um, all the way on how the vehicles are moving from sales through F and I, uh, with all the systems in the back end, um, on the service end of it with all the technology is coming and then and embrace ourselves for what's coming with AI, right? And, and with machine learning and some of the different technologies that have become available and that will continue to become available in our space to enhance the customer buying experience, but also the interaction from sales to F and I, F and I to the consumer and fixed stops and all the way through the dealer operations. So it's exciting. I think we should be extremely excited as an industry on what's coming, um, again, cause it's a resilient industry and we will just continue to weather the storm and continue to work through what we're coming out of this COVID environment into the, I don't like the new norm when people says it's just the new norm. It's not the new norm. It's just a, it's just a life cycle of our business that we've all learned how to adapt to and we'll continue to adapt. That's what we do.
Well said, Todd Sand. Thanks so much for coming on. Really enjoyed the conversation. Um, we'll throw up the link in the show notes below if anyone wants to learn more about you and CNA. And again, appreciate it. Really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah. Thanks so much. Great being with you. All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.