More than half of UK commercial motor brokers regularly struggle to obtain detailed and timely information when claims are handled by third-party providers, according to new research commissioned by specialist commercial motor insurer Direct Commercial Limited (DCL).
The findings show that 51% of brokers often or very often experience difficulties getting adequate claims updates, while 94% now say in-house claims teams provide a more responsive service than outsourced arrangements. That compares with 82% in DCL research in late 2024.
Some 93% of brokers said regular communication between the insurer, broker and policyholder was essential for keeping claims costs under control, while 47% identified near-live online information about claims as the improvement they would most like insurers to introduce.
The survey was commissioned by DCL, which itself operates an in-house claims team, and the company has not published the methodology or sample size for this latest research wave. Its previous survey in May and June covered 111 UK commercial motor brokers. The figures should therefore be regarded as an indication of broker sentiment rather than an independent measure of the entire commercial motor market.
However, the concerns are not isolated to DCL’s research. An Aviva broker survey earlier this year found that 46% of respondents regarded faster claims settlement as the main improvement they wanted from insurers. At the same time, claims are becoming more expensive: UK motor insurers paid £1.9 billion for vehicle repairs in the first quarter of 2026, while the average accidental-damage claim rose by 8% to £3,699.
Insurance is becoming an operational issue
For hauliers, the significance extends beyond how quickly an individual damaged vehicle is repaired. Insurance already forms part of a broader operational constraint within UK road freight, particularly when operators recruit inexperienced drivers or run risks that insurers consider more difficult to cover.
As Trans.INFO reported earlier this year, newly qualified HGV drivers can face higher premiums and excesses, while some may not be accepted under an operator’s existing fleet policy at all. For smaller hauliers operating on tight margins, that can make taking on an inexperienced driver financially unattractive even when vacancies exist. That has contributed to what industry researchers describe as a gap between qualifying as an HGV driver and actually becoming employable.
Fueler Consulting has repeatedly challenged the commercial insurance industry over the widespread requirement for drivers to have around two years’ experience before they become acceptable for some fleet policies. Its research argues that, despite the rule’s influence on recruitment, there is no publicly available UK HGV-specific claims dataset demonstrating that two years is the appropriate threshold at which driver risk changes.
Data published subsequently by Fueler and specialist HGV agency ADR Network also suggested that experience alone may not neatly predict risk. Their analysis covered 729,209 driver shifts over two years and found substantial differences between age and experience groups, leading the authors to argue that selection, induction, supervision and ongoing driver management may be as important as simply counting how long someone has held a licence.
The latest claims-handling findings address a different part of the insurance process, but together they show how commercial motor insurance increasingly reaches into day-to-day fleet decisions: who can be employed, which risks can be placed, what an accident ultimately costs and how quickly a vehicle can return to operation.
Britain needs new drivers – but struggles to use them
That matters because the industry’s workforce problem has not disappeared. Logistics UK reported this summer that Britain had around 283,000 employed HGV drivers in the final quarter of 2025, only 1% more than in Q4 2021. More than 61% were aged 45 or over and 21% were at least 60, while just 4.2% were aged between 16 and 24.
The Road Haulage Association estimates that the UK needs to recruit roughly 40,000 HGV drivers a year – around 200,000 over five years – to replace people leaving the profession and meet future demand. That does not represent 200,000 current vacancies, but rather the scale of recruitment the association believes will be necessary to avoid future shortages.
At the same time, Britain still cannot reliably determine how many people who gain an HGV licence subsequently obtain professional driving work. DVSA records test passes and DVLA records licences, but there is no national system linking those records with employment outcomes.
The result is an unusual contradiction: an industry preparing to recruit tens of thousands of new drivers while some newly qualified candidates report struggling to obtain their first job partly because they do not yet have the experience sought by employers and insurers.
Against that backdrop, the latest demands from brokers for quicker claims decisions and better information suggest that insurance pressures are no longer limited to the price quoted at renewal.
