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We begged, pleaded, cajoled and finally threatened but finally we managed to get a decent number of responses to our 2016 survey.

First of all, thank you to everyone who took part and to the organisations that encouraged their members to take part. In the end, we registered 277 responses, which is ever so nearly 10 per cent of the industry if you subscribe to 3,000 as the approximate number of bodyshops in Australia.

You can download the PDF here:2016 Body Repair Survey. The individual responses such as number of staff and comments on insurer relationships or 'other' comments do not show on this .

Not many of the big groups seem to have taken part, which is a shame so we have to recognise an imbalance in those results for the overall industry.
Naturally, the vast majority – just under 90 per cent – of respondents were single site shops with 10 per cent multi-site enterprises of two to five shops. The majority were metro shops with a 63-37 per cent split between metro and country.
There was a wide variety of ages from under 24 to over 61, with the largest group of respondents in the 35-45-year old block (26 per cent).
While many shops are specialising in types of repairs these days, the vast majority (68 per cent) will fix ‘whatever comes through the door’. In terms of staff, 23 per cent of shops had laid off workshop staff in the past 12 months, while just 13.5 per cent had said goodbye to admin staff.

Attitudes, threats and confidence
The two biggest perceived threats in the next 12 months are a dead heat – unsustainable profit margins with 28.5 per cent very concerned and 16 per cent worried and skilled labour shortages showed 28.5 per cent very concerned and 20 per cent saying it’s a real worry. Insurer relationship issues, which have traditionally been the number one concern, came in third on the threat list.
Confidence in the future is very split with 52 per cent confident that their business will remain profitable for the next five years and 48 per cent on the other side of the fence.
Attitudes towards the industry are pretty negative at the moment. Sixty per cent disagree with the statement ‘I love this industry and am excited about the future’ and a whopping 82 per cent agree with the statement ‘I used to love this industry but it getting too hard to make a profit’. Having said that, only 31 per cent agreed with the statement ‘I can’t wait to get out of the industry’. A worrying 65 per cent would not recommend a career in the industry to the next generation.

Selling up
The headline grabbing statistic is that 63 per cent of respondents said ‘yes’ to the question ‘if you had a good offer to sell your business in the next 12 months would you take it?’ However, the editor will take responsibility for not asking if those people would stay in the industry working at another shop or invest in a new shop which makes the result very open to interpretation. We can’t help thinking that this links with the statistic that 66 per cent of owners and managers don’t have an exit strategy for their business.

Insurer interaction
No real surprise that 75 per cent believed insurers encourage policy holder to use their approved repairers to get a cheaper repair price, while 15 per cent thought that it was to fulfil contractual obligations and 10 per cent to control repair quality.
Paint & Panel has received a fair amount of negative commentary on the time and complexity of submitting quotes through different work provider systems. The four voted most complicated and time consuming were Youi at 38.77 per cent, Progressive at 32.58 per cent, Budget Direct at 31.10 per cent and Suncorp at 30.42 per cent. The companies getting a big tick for ‘super simple’ are QBE at 34.91 per cent, RAC WA at 33.33 per cent and Allianz at 30.86 per cent.
We asked each respondent to pick a major issue they have dealing with insurers. These were varied but the most popular – or unpopular – issues were steering, appropriate hourly rates, delays in assessing, a desire for real times and real rates, the cutting of quotes and poor attitudes from work providers which ranged from ‘arrogant’ to ‘bullying’. Assessors also came in for criticism for adjusting quotes and lack of technical knowledge.

Feel free to leave a comment on the results if you would like to.

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