Moseley details collision repair industry trends examined at International Bodyshop Industry Symposium events in the U.S. and around the world.
The International Bodyshop Industry Symposium (IBIS), founded 23 years ago, has grown from a single global conference held annually in Europe to include five additional regional events that providing a unique international perspective on the industry and networking platform for those taking part. IBIS brings together collision repair operators, insurance companies, vehicle manufacturers, and associated businesses to examine future trends and opportunities as well as innovative solutions to industry challenges.
In our video interview embedded below, Jason Moseley, CEO of IBIS, details the history of IBIS, current trends impacting the collision repair and auto insurance industries both regionally and internationally, and how lessons learned in one market often travel around the world.
“IBIS is celebrating 23 years of age this year,” said Moseley of the event that was founded with its inaugural event held in September 2001 at the Celtic Manor Resort Hotel in Wales in 2001. “The idea was born that there needed to be a platform to bring the global leaders and decision makers together to talk about what’s going on in the world, how we can share best practice and make a difference together. Talking at that quite senior level.”
“So from 2001 on, we’ve grown that IBIS from what was one Global Summit event to now a whole ecosystem of IBIS events around the world and IBIS USA, which we just held in Nashville, is one of those growing regional events for the US market,” continued Moseley explaining the background of the events.
IBIS now includes multiple events around the globe including IBIS Middle East that was held in Dubai in February; IBIS ASEAN, held during March in Kuala Lumpur; IBIS USA that was held in Nashville during April.
Upcoming events include the flagship IBIS Global Summit being held June 28-30 in Milan, Italy; IBIS LATAM on July 13 in Mexico City as well as IBIS Turkey in October and IBIS Saudi Arabia in November.
More information about IBIS is available online.
“Our overall IBIS theme across all our conferences is Sustainable Strategies for Success. And we’re using sustainability in the broadest sense, which is around sustainable profit, profitability for body shops, sustainable supply chains, sustainable skills. So not just the normal environmental social government aspects,” explained Mosely. “We’ve identified four key areas that are common around the world. The first one is insurers and in terms of insurances, the insurers have been through quite a difficult time commercially since Covid. And what we’re looking for is what do insurers now need from the collision repair industry. And that is a global trend, whether it’s how they manage networks of repairing the ever-increasing technology vehicles, how they use intuitive data, data mining, AI to improve the claims process. Every country that we are involved with is on that journey. Now they may be at different stages of that journey, but it is a common thread that’s going through everything.”
One example of how the insurance industry is changing was the subject of a session at IBIS USA this year that included an interview with OnStar Insurance president, Andrew Rose.
Moseley said this is an example of where, “…we’re moving from maybe personal motor insurance to the insurance of a technology product. It’s more like product insurance and the OEMs are perfectly placed to ensure that product, they know the technology behind it, they have the data. So, I think we’re going to see a change in insurance. Again, that’s sort of a global trend that’s bubbling up.”
“We’re also seeing trends on supply chain. We all know about the challenges around what we’ve experienced with parts supply, but again, we are seeing in the supply chain people coming together, businesses coming together and consolidating and acquiring different businesses to change their portfolio,” Moseley said about other global trends and issues. “We are seeing collision, overall collisions around the world, probably decline, but the severity of those collisions and the cost of those repairs are definitely increasing.”
Concerns about attracting talent to the industry are not just a U.S. issue either.
“This industry globally as a talent crisis that’s attracting talent, that’s retaining talent. And part of that we are getting into now is we are looking for a different set of skills sometimes as well. So, it’s not just technical skills, repairing modern vehicles, understanding how they need to process through a body shop. We need process skills as well as proper repair planning skills as well as those traditional technical skills,” said Moseley. “We need to change our approach and a lot of that is about how we brand ourselves as an industry, how we brand ourselves as employers and how we market ourselves.”
The issue will be included in the upcoming Global Summit agenda later in June in the strategic topic on prioritizing people that will include a address by James Crawley, entrepreneur, investor, business consultant, speaker and author on the importance of creating a strong employer brand. Panel discussions on building industry partnerships and how the industry is taking action on the issue are also part of the agenda.
On the June Global Summit event, Moseley said attendees can also expect an in-depth examination of insurance and collision repair industry relationships as well as OEM participation.
“We’re going to see a lot of insurers on stage talking about insurance and what they want from the collision industry. We’ve got a lot more interaction this year from the OEM side as well. And we are going to be hitting those four key blocks in the insurance requirements from our industry, the supply chain and consolidation and collaboration side of things, the people element.”