Lowering Risk, Controlling Costs
Case Study: How El Metro took on 2.5× the retention while cutting its worst-case loss severity by 80%
– 93.7% Reduction in Paid Losses
– $100-$250K Increase Per-Occurrence Retention
– $244,263-$50,000 Largest Single Occurrence
– 12 Month Time to Measurable Results
“When we moved to a $250,000 retention, every accident became money out of our own operating budget. That focused us.” – Robert Garza, General Manager, HTG
El Metro is the public transit system for the City of Laredo, Texas, managed by Hendrickson Transportation Group (HTG). At the 2/1/2025 renewal, HTG’s per-occurrence retention grew from $100,000 to $250,000 — the same month, El Metro installed Samsara’s camera-based driver monitoring. HTG took on $150,000 more retained risk per occurrence, and within twelve months its worst-case severity fell 80%.
Incentive + Tooling, Together
The higher retention took effect the same month Samsara went live, giving supervisors the tools to manage the exposure HTG had just taken on.
Training Targets the Pattern
A 110.3-hour TAPTCO curriculum is built around El Metro’s own collision history — rear-end, intersection, and turning-related incidents.
Claims Support Scaled Up
Every claim within HTG’s $250,000 retention, the entire self-insured layer, is managed by Paramount Claims, CTIP’s dedicated third-party administrator. Paramount handles first report of loss, investigation, reserve-setting, and litigation coordination on every file, giving HTG a professional claims operation behind a retention most agencies this size would have to manage alone.
A critical component of the Community Transit Insurance Program (CTIP) is its exclusive relationship with Paramount Claims, our dedicated Third-Party Administrator (TPA) responsible for managing member claims. This relationship gives members a meaningful voice throughout the claims process, promoting communication, transparency, and collaboration in claim resolution—an advantage many transit systems lack under traditional insurance arrangements.
The Results
In the first full policy year under the higher retention, El Metro’s loss experience moved sharply in the right direction.
Under the previous $100,000 SIR in 2024–2025, the agency saw 12 accidents and 19 claim lines, with $276,424 paid to date, $143,910 in open reserves, $420,335 in total incurred losses, and a largest occurrence of $244,263.
After the retention increased to $250,000 in 2025–2026, accidents rose slightly to 15 and claim lines to 22 — yet paid losses fell to just $17,492, open reserves dropped to $112,600, and total incurred losses came in at $130,092.
The largest single occurrence fell to $50,000. In other words, even with a 150% increase in retained risk and a modest uptick in claim activity, El Metro cut its total incurred losses by 69.1% and its worst-case severity by 79.5%.
Learn more about how Hendrickson Transportation Group took on a higher per-occurrence retention, paired it with driver monitoring technology and targeted operator training, and cut its worst-case loss severity by 93.7%.
Request the complete case study, inside, you’ll find:
-The full fleet and operational profile behind the results
-The claims and loss data, year over year
-Why severity dropped even as claim frequency rose
-The training and claims-administration approach behind the numbers
