“The reality,” DeSantis continued, “is that these events happen all the time and do cause real damage. We are seeing increased measures being taken to mitigate potential losses. As technology advances, consumers will be warned with alerts about potentially damaging hail damage and urged to take appropriate precautions.”
“As weather patterns change, we are also seeing more storms in regions that have not traditionally experienced as much hail. For example, Ontario is not traditionally a province with a lot of hail, but in 2023 there were at least five separate major storms that caused damage.”
With the increase in larger storms, when asked how long hail repairs take, DeSantis concluded, “There are so many factors to consider when it comes to how long it takes a storm to work through hundreds of claims. Do the repairs require replacing parts, which typically involves hoods and roofs, and if so, what is the parts availability like? We’ve seen with larger CATS that parts availability can quickly become an issue. There is also capacity in the body shop, as these repairs are often larger and take longer, causing delays. In these cases, it is not uncommon for repairs to be completed more than a year after the initial storm. However, PDR can help with timing.”
Bing Wong, general manager of Canadian Hail Repair and United Hail Repair, said their preferred process is one that allows hail damage files to be sent to body shops for processing.
“In the body shop,” Wong noted, “we can determine the best repair process for each vehicle and create an appropriate repair plan for approved repairs. When the volume of damage is too large for the body shops in the market, we set up CAT centers or drive-in assessment centers so that customers can be served more quickly.”
Despite potential changes in national weather conditions and technological disruptions in the automotive industry, Wong said Canadian Hail Repair is “not yet convinced that scanning technologies offer insurers a clear and consistent net benefit in terms of speed or cost.” Wong further noted that his group of companies has already worked extensively with scanning companies and that “these technologies will certainly be part of the future of hail damage processing, but today they still require a significant amount of human involvement.”
The group also believes that “in such a dynamic global market, Canada does not experience hailstorms every year that are so severe that it would require investment to maintain, deploy and set up systems and update technology.”
Compared to areas like the United States, where Wong’s hail business operates under the name United Hail Repair, he believes that “hail damage is largely cyclical and regional, and we still don’t see widespread use of scanning technology, even in markets like Texas and Colorado, which receive more hail each year than all of Canada.”
Unlike Desantis, Wong believes that “hail is a relatively small problem in Canada, while many other markets around the world have comparatively more hailstorms and much higher levels of damage.”
Despite this belief, Wong believes that in domestic hail damage cases, the costs associated with settling claims can regularly be high, “because large hailstones can damage almost all of a vehicle’s body panels in a very short period of time, whereas in a typical, minor car accident, on average, perhaps only two or three body panels are damaged.”
In addition, Wong noted that “hail can also cause quite severe damage to roof panels, roof rails and rear quarter panels, which are difficult or impossible to replace on a vehicle.”
To reduce costs while ensuring efficient repairs, Canadian Hail Repair believes that “the use of PDR can result in significant reductions in damage costs.” This is particularly because “savings are achieved by reducing total loss” and because “PDR can avoid the replacement and refinishing of many exterior panels.”
Wong believes that “in many cases, PDR can turn the irreparable into the easily repairable,” and his team “avoids the need to replace and repaint hoods, trunk lids, roof panels, and even doors.”
Against this background, Wong stressed that ultimately, “repair costs will always be a problem for insurers when thousands of additional claims suddenly have to be processed in a particular market.”
