2020 Aon Public Transit Liability Benchmark Analysis

The Aon Public Transit Liability Benchmark study examines trends in frequency, severity, and overall loss rates related to public transit liability.

The 2020 report is perhaps the most important study of public transit liability that Aon has conducted to date. The current environment for risks related to public transportation operations is extremely challenging. We expect the environment to continue to be difficult subject to our ability to effectively manage the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic effect on ridership, the commercial risk transfer markets for public transits had already begun to impact the price and availability of liability insurance.

While we have determined that at this time (data for this report was collected only through June 2020) we are unable to draw statistical conclusions related to the impact of COVID-19 on loss trends on either a frequency or severity basis based on the timing of the data that was submitted for evaluation, we do conclude that the need to further enhance our understanding of transit risk profiles is even more important as available insurance capacity continues to tighten and pricing for liability insurance for transit risks increases.

Download the Executive Summary (PDF) of the 2020 Public Transit Liability Benchmark Analysis or click the thumbnail at right.

Methodology

Forty-one organizations, representing 121 individual transits across twenty-one states, Washington DC, and Canada with approximately 3.0 billion rider trips each year, provided loss and exposure data for this study.

The database of public transit liability claims contains approximately 90,000 non-zero claims from both auto liability and general liability lines, representing approximately $1.5 billion of incurred losses. The database contains historical claim information for accident years 2009 to 2019.

The data call for the 2020 Aon Public Transit Liability Benchmark Analysis was issued in March 2020 in coordination with APTA and was open to all public transit organizations. Data was collected through June 2020.

We offer our sincerest gratitude to the participants in the study for their time and efforts and to the supporters at APTA without whom we would not have been able to produce the report.