Issue No. 5 | May 5, 2026

Intelligence for direct marketers in insurance, home services, warranty, and protection.

This Week: The AI Infrastructure Shift

THE NUMBER: 13.9%

That is how much auto repair and maintenance costs have risen since August 2022, per BLS, compared to 5.6% for general CPI over the same period. The average U.S. vehicle is now 12.8 years old. Wages have grown 30% since 2020 while vehicle maintenance and repair costs rose 46%. The consumer on the other end of your outbound call is operating inside that cost environment. Demand for protection products remains tied to those underlying pressures.

What is changing is the infrastructure those products move through.

THE OPERATIONAL ANGLE

Private equity captured 87% of auto retail M&A activity in 2025, per Colonnade Advisors’ DealerTech M&A Landscape report (March 2026). The deals are concentrated in AI platforms with deep data integration: claims processing, voice intelligence, intent scoring, and compliance monitoring. The companies attracting capital are not building new point solutions. They are building the connective tissue between the systems your warranty products already touch.

At the Agent Summit on April 15, industry panelists outlined a direction where dealership conversations across the sales floor, phone, text, email, and the F&I office are increasingly captured and used for training, coaching, and compliance through AI. Similar infrastructure is emerging for direct marketers. Phone-based warranty sales already operate under TCPA, state-specific solicitation rules, and CFPB oversight. The ability to audit calls for compliance, train reps on actual conversation data, and flag non-compliant scripts automatically is moving from concept into active deployment.

The marketers who treat this as a capability to adopt will have a different cost structure than those who encounter it as a regulatory finding.

FROM THE BLOG

DealerTech AI in Warranty Claims: From Processing to Decision Systems

This week’s post covers the AI capability categories attracting private equity capital in automotive retail, including claims processing, communications systems, buyer intent platforms, and fixed operations intelligence, and the consolidation activity across those platforms.

QUICK HIT

The automotive AI market is projected to grow from $1.4 billion in 2023 to $7.75 billion by 2030, per Colonnade Advisors. That growth reflects infrastructure being built across the channel. The pace at which it is adopted will determine how it affects operating models.

Until next Tuesday —

If the shift toward AI-driven compliance and call-level visibility is changing how you think about your outbound strategy, reply here. We can walk through how those changes show up across campaign performance and timing.