For the first time ever, CCC Intelligent Solutions reported that bodily injury claims accounted for 52.3% of the combined dollars paid across bodily injury and auto physical damage claims in 2025. The shift could indicate a future increase in auto physical damage claims as injured parties have less incentive to avoid filing a claim. Additionally, insurers that push for anything less than safe, proper repairs risk greater costs on the next injury claim.

The report, “Auto Claims Payout Trends in the Age of Generative AI,” says 15 years ago, BI accounted for approximately 45% of dollars paid across BI and APD claims. The largest shift happened in 2025 – 2.6% – which also had a significantly lower frequency of casualty claims compared to APD claims.  

“It’s unprecedented. The real baseline of this going back about 20 years was about 45% of the dollars paid for liability coverage,” said CCC Director of Casualty Industry Analytics Erik Bahnsen in a video interview with FenderBender. “It wasn't until officially the last year where that was flipped on its head because of the pressure of both a rise in relative BI claim frequency and notable severity pressure at the same time.” 

The report explores what factors are causing the shift including: 

• Increasing numbers of uninsured/underinsured motorists 

• Healthcare inflation, particularly auto liability claims 

• Changing treatment patterns 

• Greater attorney involvement 

• Rising social inflation 

• More sophisticated claim narratives 

• The introduction of generative AI technology 

For collision repair shops, Bahnsen says this has a more indirect effect. Any property damage claim requires better documentation, making it easier to attribute the cause of injury based on vehicle damage. 

“What happens with a property damage claim? It's more about documenting the damages to where we can basically recreate the collision forces,” Bahnsen said during the interview. “You may have heard us reference delta V or change in velocity, right? So, better documentation around the damages to ideally both vehicles, not just one vehicle, allows us to have better support to say, hey, is this injury likely based on what damages we see on the vehicles?” 

For insurers, the change is putting more pressure on the bottom line. The combined ratio would run five to 10 points lower, but the industry remained profitable due to premium increases in 2023 and 2024. Bahnsen said if this continues, consumers will have more increases to their premiums.