Aftermarket president Adam Johnson on navigating an uneven market
If you ask Adam Johnson what defines the automotive aftermarket right now, he won’t point to a single trend. The challenge, he says, is that several forces are impacting the space at once, but not at the same pace.
Repair costs remain elevated. Verdict severity continues to influence underwriting. Excess capacity is still constrained. Property markets are adjusting. And layered over all of it, is the steady integration of AI into underwriting workflows. None of it is entirely new but what feels different is how unevenly it’s unfolding — and how one line of business now influences another.
Over the last several years, catastrophe modeling drove significant changes on the property side. “Those models pushed prices up for a few years, and now the property markets are way down,” says Johnson. With property pricing beginning to ease, carriers are recalibrating their portfolios. Many still need premiums, which is drawing renewed attention to commercial auto. “What that means is some of the terms and conditions are starting to loosen up,” Johnson explains. “In the commercial auto space, you’re still getting increases; they’re just not what they were the last two or three years.”
But even with more carriers willing to write commercial auto, the underlying risk hasn’t fundamentally changed. “Auto in general is still a challenge for all the insurance companies,” says Johnson. That’s where the market gets complicated.
“Everyone’s approach is slightly different, even though when you talk to the carriers, they’ll all say they’re tightening up. In reality, the speed at which they’re making changes is significantly different,” Johnson says. “Some will adopt more strict standards right away. Others will kind of ease their way into it,” he continues. “It’s a matter of being able to navigate that.”
For brokers, that creates a patchwork environment where the challenge isn’t simply finding capacity, but understanding which carriers are leaning in and which are tightening guardrails — and doing so quickly enough to stay competitive.
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Different risk profiles across the market
Part of what makes the automotive aftermarket challenging is that it doesn’t just face a single exposure. “Prices have been going up in the commercial auto space in every one of our programs, but not equally,” Johnson says. Tow operations, OEM-related businesses, daily rental fleets and forestry organizations all operate under very different conditions. The risk profiles can vary significantly.
In the tow segment, consolidation has been a major shift. “You’re seeing fewer, but larger customers,” Johnson explains. “And the price changes that are going in there are still fairly significant compared to some of the other risk classes.”
When fleets grow larger and operate more vehicles in live traffic environments, the severity potential rises. And when severity enters the equation, underwriting discipline becomes critical. “One wrong verdict really hurts the results,” Johnson says. “So you don’t really want that exposure in your program.”
That’s not said casually. Programs are built over time — and can be destabilized quickly. Growth and retention still matter, but they have to be balanced carefully against program sustainability. “It’s a balancing act,” Johnson adds. “How do you implement the changes that need to be made, but still work with your carriers so that you’re able to insure businesses? You’re trying to thread the needle on that. You know where the market needs to go, and even if it’s not there yet, find the best way to get there while maintaining profitability for your carrier.”
That tension between profitability and partnership runs through the market today.
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The real pressure point for brokers
When brokers talk about pressure in the aftermarket space, it rarely shows up as a single major issue. More often, the pressure appears in the practical details of placement — timelines, referrals and evolving underwriting expectations.
Johnson puts it plainly, “The biggest thing that hurts any deal, really, is time. If you don’t get your quote out there fast enough, then you’re not going to have the opportunity to write that account.”
In competitive placements, responsiveness can determine whether you’re even part of the conversation. But speed without clarity creates its own friction. “I think those are the two biggest things we offer,” Johnson says. “More timeliness and clarity — both from the carrier and from the underwriter to the agent. And that really is what smooths things out.”
In an uneven market, clarity becomes stabilizing. When underwriting appetites are shifting, brokers need to understand what is actually viable so they can advise their clients with confidence. The real pressure point, then, is execution — how quickly, clearly and consistently decisions can be made. And as that bar rises, the infrastructure supporting underwriting matters more than ever.
AI standardizes. Human judgement differentiates.
Technology is also reshaping parts of this conversation, but not always in the ways people expect.
Applications are becoming more standardized, data is more accessible and information flows more freely across the marketplace. That creates efficiency, but it changes where differentiation happens. “The more AI goes into it, the more every application looks the same,” Johnson says. “It comes down to who is evaluating the information that comes in — the human in the loop —because two people evaluating the same information could be completely different.”
For Johnson, however, the focus isn’t really on sweeping transformation but on practical implementation. “Everyone likes to talk about AI right now,” he says. “But actually implementing it in the workflow is where it’s at.”
If a process improvement saves minutes on a submission and improves turnaround time, that’s meaningful. “It doesn’t have to be some grandiose thing,” Johnson says. “It just needs to be something that’s going to save 10 minutes on every deal. It’s about solving the small things, and if you solve enough of those small things, you make a huge impact.”
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Connecting the right markets
One advantage Johnson and his team have in navigating an uneven market is perspective — not just within a single program, but across the broader ecosystem of carriers, brokers and adjacent business divisions. Because Arrowhead General works closely with multiple carriers, the team can often look at placements from more than one angle.
Sometimes that means structuring an account differently. Sometimes it means approaching a placement through a different carrier relationship or underwriting lens. Recently, Johnson’s team renewed a large auto dealership customer by collaborating with another Arrowhead program to place their property coverage. “Our auto dealer program does write property,” explains Johnson. “But we were able to get more favorable terms and conditions for that customer, which helped us retain the overall account for Arrowhead.”
It’s a practical example of what platform depth allows. “There aren’t a lot of businesses out there that we can’t help, or brokers that we can’t help as an organization,” Johnson says. “It’s just finding how to connect all those pieces to bring the best possible offering to that agent, broker or customer.”
This reflects an understanding of how the pieces fit together — how carriers think about profitability, how brokers manage client expectations and how risks evolve across different segments of the aftermarket.
Threading the needle
The automotive aftermarket isn’t defined by a single market shift. It’s being shaped by overlapping forces — repair costs, verdict volatility, consolidation, technology and shifting carrier appetites — all moving at different speeds.
Navigating that environment requires balance. For Johnson and his aftermarket programs, that means protecting profitability while still supporting brokers and carriers, and making thoughtful adjustments without losing underwriting discipline.
Threading the needle in this market isn’t about reacting to every shift, but about staying steady and understanding where the real pressure points are. And for brokers working in the automotive aftermarket, that perspective can make all the difference when navigating today’s placements.
This material has been prepared for general informational purposes only, is intended to apply generally rather than to any specific company and presumes appropriate discretion will be exercised regarding any particular situation.
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