Placing You First Insurance Podcast by CRC Group
The Placing You First Podcast spans a diverse spectrum of insurance industry issues to keep you and your clients informed.
Placing You First Insurance Podcast by CRC Group
Protect What Powers You: Inside Starwind Equipment Services
What if repairs didn’t stall your schedule or drain your cash while invoices pile up? We sit down with Starwind Equipment Services’ president, Randi Glaszer, to unpack a smarter way to protect heavy equipment—one that matches the way contractors actually buy, finance, and fix their machines.
We break down how multi‑year physical damage insurance on admitted paper can be written to the life of a lease or loan, with rates locked, loss payees satisfied, and premiums often rolled into financing. Randi explains why Starwind pays 100% actual cash value up front instead of staging replacement cost, and how broad PDI protection follows the machine through real‑world risks like transit damage, overturn, flood, theft, and job site incidents.
The real unlock is claims. Starwind assigns one adjuster to coordinate both PDI and ESC from day one, opening files together, paying verified labor during parts delays, and ensuring towing, cranes, and protection costs don’t slip through notice windows. We also talk eligibility, state availability, equipment age and exclusions, and why this model was built to advocate for small and mid‑sized contractors who can’t afford friction when iron is idle. If you want fewer surprises, faster releases from the dealer, and protection that keeps projects moving, this conversation is for you.
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Welcome to Placing You First, where we bring you real conversations with industry leaders and insights you can use right now. I'm Scott Gordon.
Amanda Knight:And I'm Amanda Knight, and today we're talking about equipment protection. Specifically, how Starwind Equipment Services is redefining the landscape with solutions for physical damage and extended service coverage.
Scott Gordon:And we're thrilled today to be joined by Randy Glaser, president of Starwind Equipment Services, who will help walk us through what makes this program different and a better option for your clients.
Amanda Knight:This is the Placing Your First Podcast from CRC Group. This podcast features news and insights from a vast knowledge base of more than 5,500 associates who write more than 30 billion in premium annually. Plus, we give you the latest information on what's happening at CRC.
Scott Gordon:It's the Placing Your First Podcast.
Amanda Knight:And now the host of the podcast, Amanda Knight and Scott Gordon. So Randy, um let's start with the basics. This is a new program, right? It's not been out and about for very long. So what does Starwind Equipment offer? And what problem are you looking to solve in the equipment space?
Randi Glazer:Hi Amanda. At Star Wind Equipment we offer physical damage insurance, or PDI coverage, and extended service contracts, or ESC, which contractors equipment at the point of sale. Having more certainty around heavy equipment ownership reduces the burden and anxiety of future repair costs. Our target customer is any business looking to purchase construction or material handling equipment up to a half a million dollars or less per piece of equipment or per policy. This generally includes small to medium-sized contractors or warehouses or anyone purchasing this type of equipment. We run the gamut of types of construction equipment we cover, with a few exceptions. We don't write agricultural equipment, equipment used for forestry or logging, energy equipment, cranes, recycling equipment, equipment used for above or below ground mining, or equipment that is intended to be used as rental equipment. Rental equipment is specifically excluded from our policy. Having a ceiling of a half a million dollars per piece of equipment in effect takes us out of the most hazardous types of construction. We write policies in the 48 contiguous states, except for California, Oregon, Vermont, and the state of Washington. However, because this equipment is mobile, if a piece of equipment makes its way to any of those states, rest assured the equipment is covered under our policy. To make sure we are able to source parts to repair equipment, we do not write equipment that will be older than 20 years at the end of the policy. It should also be noted that we do not write equipment that is titled or plated. The physical damage insurance would be covered under their commercial auto policy.
Scott Gordon:Well, now anyone in this industry doesn't have to be told that there are lots of options out there. So, Randy, what makes Starwind different?
Randi Glazer:Scott, we can offer traditional annual policies when equipment is purchased outright. However, one of our competitive advantages is our ability to offer a multi-year policy on admitted paper when equipment is tied to a lease or a loan. We can write the policy for the life of the leased alone up to 60 months. The loss payee is added to the policy, which makes finance companies happy not having to track down insurance coverage for as long as our policy is in effect. Our policies can be written for new or used equipment. If the equipment is financed, we can offer a multi-year policy and our rates are locked in for the life of the policy. The PDI premium can usually be rolled into the customer's financing agreement. Our policies are paid in full at policy inception. This means the policy cannot be canceled by us for non-payment or for any other reason. The insured can cancel their policy if they pay off their lease or their loan early, or they can keep it in effect. It really is up to them. If they sell their equipment, we can prorate the cancellation. If there's a total loss, we can terminate the policy on behalf of the insured and offer a prorated return premium. Just like a lease or a loan, once the financing is closed, so is our policy. Nothing can be added to our policy once it is issued. Another nice feature is we provide 100% actual cash value on all equipment. This is important when writing multi-year policies. The limit on the policy day one should be sufficient to pay losses over the life of the policy. This is also good for the insured considering they receive their entire claim payment at once and not in pieces. Replacement costs is paid in two phases. The first phase is the 80% actual cash value piece, and the remainder of the loss payment is paid after the claim rep receives receipt that the equipment has been replaced. This leads to longer wait times between claim payments and does not make the insured whole all at once to purchase another piece of equipment. We took this into account when designing this program. Our coverage is the broadest in the multi-year policy space. Besides offering 100% actual cash value, our PDI policy is designed to cover equipment listed on the policy if damage is due to an unforeseen accident directly resulting from a collision, earthquake, fire, flood, hail, hurricane, loading and unloading, mudslides, rollover or overturn, theft, tornado, transit, terrorism, vandalism, vermin infestation, or while on location or at a job site. We also provide extended service contracts at the point of sale. An extended service contract is not an insurance policy. However, the contracts are backed by a contractual liability insurance policy, also known as a clip. Our ESC covers unexpected covered repairs to equipment in the case of a mechanical failure. Sometimes these plans are referred to as extended warranties. However, only manufacturers can provide warranties on products. A warranty is included in the purchase price by the manufacturer for assets such as construction equipment, automobiles, or laptops, to name a few. Extended warranties can also be provided by the manufacturer at an additional cost. An ESC acts just like an extended warranty, however, because it's not provided by the manufacturer, it cannot be called an extended warranty. An ESC plan is an agreement to pay for failure to recovered component on covered equipment. Just like other extended service contracts, Darwin's equipment's ESC becomes effective when the original manufacturer's base warranty expires. Although an ESC does not cover wear and tear to equipment, depending on the plan purchased, our ESC may provide protection for the equipment's powertrain, hydraulic system, electrical system, air conditioning system, as well as many other components according to our master part schedule in accordance with the terms and conditions. Our equipment eligibility mirrors our PDI appetite, except we only write ESC on new equipment still on the dealer lot. Once the equipment leaves the dealer's lot, we are unable to offer ESC. We offer comprehensive master part schedules for our ESC plans with options up to 5,000 hours and 16 months with three plan choices. Superior, which has the broadest coverage, Powertrain and Hydraulics, this is a scaled-down version of Superior, and Powertrain, which only covers those parts.
Amanda Knight:That all sounds amazing, Randy, but one thing that is always on my mind when it comes to insurance products is the deductible I have to pay. So talk to us a little bit about the deductible for this ESC plan.
Randi Glazer:Amanda, I couldn't agree more. I'm always looking at my own deductibles as well. So a helpful feature of our ESC plans is they don't have a deductible. This helps the customer save on out-of-pocket costs. Most finance companies will finance the ESC into their lease or loan. Offering an ESC to your customer can help them finance the repairs as a way to plan for the long-term cost of heavy equipment ownership. The primary cost that drives up prices is labor, followed by other overhead such as utilities. Given the rising labor costs, locking in future costs at today's dollars makes sense for small to medium-sized contractors. And PDI and ESC can work together to cover claims. Another competitive advantage and one that is unique to Starwind is we utilize one claim adjuster for both products simultaneously. Even though we offer two products at the time of a loss of repair, we have one claim adjuster to make sure the insured or customer is receiving the highest level of service by using both the policy and the plan together.
Amanda Knight:Is that unusual, Randy?
Randi Glazer:It's very unusual. It does not happen today. No other insurance competitor is coordinating claim payments between an ESC plan and a PDI policy. We are the very first to coordinate these, and as we go along, we will have data that no other insurer has access to. How it works in real life is quite differently than how it should work. All other carriers have ESC repairs submitted after the repair is completed, while a PDI claim is submitted at the time the equipment is brought to the dealer for repair, generally right after a claim ensues. This is a real life example I came across that made me reevaluate how contractors' equipment claims should be handled. A very large piece of equipment was being hauled when it hit a bump and severed the frame, rendering the equipment unable to be towed. A crane had to be brought in to move the equipment off the road to protect it. In the meantime, a flatbed was en route to the equipment and another crane had to be brought in to put it on the flatbed and take it to the dealer. The cost to the insured was $16,000 out of pocket.
Amanda Knight:Wow.
Randi Glazer:It was a lot. That's a lot. It was a lot. When the equipment was brought at the dealer shop, the dealer knew right away the damage to the frame was a known manufacturer's defect and would be covered under the ESC plan. However, the dealer didn't know about the crane and flatbed costs to help to protect the equipment, which would have been covered under the PDI policy. Once the repair was complete, the dealer notified the ESC claim rep, but it was too late to turn to access the PDI policy since more than 60 days had passed. If repair is taking longer than expected, for example, waiting on a part to come in, we're able to pay for any labor costs that had been incurred up until that point. There's no reason for a dealer to be sitting on, say, 10 hours of labor when they could pay when we could pay that and wait for any additional receipts to settle the repair of the claim. We understand our customers need their equipment back as quickly as possible so they can continue making money for their business. Every day they're at without their equipment costs them time and money. We have made the claim process more streamlined with less friction for our insureds and dealers and more cost effective for us. Setting up the both claims at the onset of any repair speeds up the claim process by up to a minimum of two weeks or more, thus making it easier on the dealer to release the equipment back to their customer. Our job is to make the customer and the dealer happy.
Amanda Knight:This sounds like a a great way to do that. I mean, I know even just normal car repairs seem to take longer and longer as you know, there may be a part that you're waiting to be shipped or that is out of stock. I can only imagine that for massive equipment like this, that that may even be more of a compounded issue. I would assume in some instances it can be really hard to get the parts or even the mechanic you need to work on that kind of equipment.
Randi Glazer:Oh my God, Amanda, that has never been more true than right now. The reason I started this program was because I saw firsthand small to medium-sized contractors getting cheated. I personally called the insurance carrier when those craned flatbed receipts came in and could not be paid. I begged the carrier to make an exception for a claim not being reported in a timely manner because the dealer did not advise us of the repair. After my initial call, the carrier never spoke with me again. I got tired of the small business owner being treated unfairly by people who meant well but didn't provide what the customer paid them to do. At the time, I advocated for the company to adjust their claim handling in favor of a more customer-centric model, but they wanted nothing to do with it, which is when I put my business plan together for this program. Construction is the backbone of this country. Small businesses drive our economy. Nothing moves in America without insurance. We as the insurance community need to do a better job of not only being an advocate for our small insureds, but also looking out for them at a vulnerable time when there's a claim. A lot of small contractors rely on their ESC and PDI claim reps to do the best job they can. Since this is a totally new concept in claim handling, I have personally trained our claim reps on how to handle claims. Offering multi-year plans and policies for equipment tied to a leaser alone, coupled with comprehensive claim review across both products, is something we want every small and medium-sized contractor to have access to. As I mentioned previously, having more certainty around heavy equipment ownership reduces the burden and anxiety of future repair costs.
Amanda Knight:This sounds like a great way to get everything you need done at one time and you know the most efficient uh way possible. So kudos to you for developing this, Randy. Are you seeing success at this point? I know you just got started.
Randi Glazer:We have been seeing success. We have been onboarding uh producers, and it's an engine that takes a little bit of time to get going because of how uh we don't work with P and C licensed folks, we work with limited lines credit licenses. It's a whole different category. I will say Starwin and CRC have been wonderful. They have been incredibly supportive. I couldn't have asked for a better partner, and I am so excited to bring this to contractors and small businesses out there. I totally agree with you about automobiles. If I can find a way to do this with automobiles and their ESC and PDI policies, I would absolutely do that. I've been thinking about that for truckers and things like that. I just got to get my little piece up and running.
Amanda Knight:Right. Well, we'll keep our eyes out for more things to come from you then down the road.
Scott Gordon:Yeah, that large equipment, though. I mean, bigger equipment, bigger bells, those things are enormous. All I can think of when we're talking about these things are the giant wheels and the guys stand in front of those giant earth mover things. When I think of big equipment, that's just what I think of.
Randi Glazer:It's funny because the things people think of uh of total losses. Let's say there's a flood. This isn't a total loss. You're gonna take the hydraulics out, you're gonna drive them out, you're gonna put them back in. It's not a total loss. But those are things, so it's really opened my eyes to a lot of things because I've always been on the insurance side, and then I was working for a company who does a lot of these, and I'm thinking to myself, why are we doing it this way? Like, don't you? I the ESC manager, the claims manager, I'm like, don't you know what the insurance policy says? No. The insurance people, so it's two different things. And I'm looking at this from a 30,000-foot view and saying, we can do this so much better. And when I brought it up to them, they thought I was nuts. Don't touch it, don't change it, we get commissioned, don't do anything. And I'm like, Well, don't you care about the small guy? And when I started pitching this to some reinsurers and insurance carriers, they're like, How come we're not doing it now? I said, I don't know, I wasn't there to tell them about it. Yeah, but it was kind of funny, and I'm very passionate about this because I feel like this is I this is one of my missions. This is something I want to bring. After 35 years of doing insurance, we can do a better job in the insurance industry. We can add, we should have done better during COVID. We could do a better, a much better job. I don't want people to be like, oh, I have an ESC policy. Oh, look, it's covered. It's not a lot, not it's not a lottery ticket. We shouldn't treat it like a lottery ticket.
Amanda Knight:Right.
Randi Glazer:We know that people don't read their policies, we know people don't read their plans. That's why we're gonna do it for them. We're gonna help them.
Scott Gordon:Well, that kind of rapid fire thinking can only lead to rapid fire, our our our little question game that we play. And this is just, Randy, just answer off the top of your head. So our first question is if you weren't in insurance, thank God you are, but if you weren't in insurance, what would you be doing?
Randi Glazer:Oh God, I would have been a I was gonna go into psychopharmacology, which is kind of uh esoteric, but it's to determine, you know, uh SSRIs and how they affect the brain and things like that. I don't know why I wanted to get into it. It was the first thing I ever thought that I would do. But my dad wanted me to get a business degree. And since he offered to pay for my degree, the golden rule applies, which is the one with the gold makes the rules. So I got a bachelor in a degree in economics.
Scott Gordon:Well uh and that leads perfectly into the second question, which is what's the best business advice you've ever received? Was that it?
Randi Glazer:No, best not to get a business degree. Well, that would be good. But honestly, the my I love my dad to death. He was such a very fair man, and I've gotten a lot of my uh business sense from him. But he told me as I was an underwriter trainee, he says, Randy, this is not a personality contest. Not everyone's going to like you, but they need to respect you. And I've given that advice to many others starting out in the business world.
Scott Gordon:I love that, I love that description of your father. He was a fair man. I I no one says that about their butt they're always like, oh, he's my hero or something vague. But that I I like that. That's a I would I would love to be described that way, yeah.
Randi Glazer:There's a very fair man, and I I've as an underwriter, I've gone back to producers over the years where they didn't like my decision, but they thought it was a fair decision. Right. And that's all you can ever hear me out, and then we'll go from there. But he was a very fair man.
Scott Gordon:Nice. And our our th our third and final question is coffee or tea?
Amanda Knight:Tea with honey, please. Okay. I'm kind of neither one, actually, unless it's cold coffee.
Scott Gordon:I'm I'm neither one either.
Amanda Knight:Oh, after all these years, Scott.
Scott Gordon:I know. I'm the only graphic designer I've ever met that doesn't drink coffee.
Amanda Knight:I don't I'm not a coffee drinker either. I don't like hot things. Make me feel like I'm boiling on the inside.
Scott Gordon:I even cool off my hot cocoa.
Amanda Knight:Same. Just give me talking about it. Skip it. Well, uh, Randy, thank you so much for joining us today. Your insights uh and and how Starwind Equipment is raising the bar. Truly uh valuable for all of our listeners today.
Scott Gordon:Yeah, and for more information or to explore, you know, how Starwind Equipment Services can help your clients, reach out to your CRC specialty broker or visit the Starwind Equipment website at Starwindequipment.com.
Amanda Knight:Thanks for joining us, Randy. My pleasure. And thanks for listening to PlacingE First to all of our listeners out there. We'll see you next time.
