Photo: Angelique Magi
By Fleet Management Weekly Staff
January 28, 2026
Fleet managers must manage numerous costs, both predictable and unpredictable. Hard costs such as leasing, maintenance, and fuel are relatively straightforward, while risk management is often more complex. To reduce expenses from accidents—which can include everything from vehicle repairs to legal costs—fleets need a specialized risk management solution.
Element Fleet Management offers comprehensive fleet management services with a strong focus on risk management. Their key strategy for reducing risk is to improve visibility, primarily through monitoring driver behavior and analyzing telematics data through collaborative Risk Reviews. This insight helps fleet managers spot accident trends and address problematic behavior early with training modules and monitoring metrics. Element works with fleet managers to create personalized risk strategies that help them reach specific goals aligned with their fleet needs.
We met with Angelique Magi, former Vice President and Head of Insurance at Element Fleet Management, to discuss Element Risk Solutions and how they help clients save money by reducing risk.
The total cost of fleet risk management is high. How is Element working with fleets to help mitigate these risks?
Element works with our clients to manage not only their total cost of ownership but also their total cost of risk. Total cost of ownership covers obvious fleet expenses such as leasing, maintenance, fuel, and other operating costs. Total cost of risk includes collision repair costs, impact of preventable vs non-preventable incidents on vehicle downtime, driver injury, and potential litigation exposure associated with owning and operating a commercial fleet.
Can you share a success story from one of your clients?
One of our clients operates a fleet of about 6,000 vehicles. We manage all major service aspects for them, including leasing, maintenance, and fleet administration. However, we didn’t have the ability to track driver behavior. That’s where our product, DriverCare Connect, came into play. It allows clients to detect and score their drivers’ behaviors using the power of data to reduce vehicle collisions. When we partnered with the client to roll it out to all their drivers, they saw a 6.8% decrease in accident rates on a year-over-year basis.
Our client’s main business revenue is not based on over-the-road haulage. They are focused on servicing and repair revenue from their customers. With such a large fleet, their priority was ensuring customer service standards were met. That was their metric. By highlighting the preventability of on-the-road incidents with driver behavior awareness, the client saved over a million dollars through lower deductibles and less downtime.
What was interesting in that case was that we weren’t just uncovering high-risk drivers. Using MVR monitoring, telematics, and data visualization, we identified drivers who appeared to be low risk because they hadn’t had accidents yet, but whose behavior could be potentially dangerous. We presented benchmarking data for industry severe accidents and showed what changes in driver management could help avoid serious highway accidents. We guided them on which driver training modules would help visualize the data with their drivers and build awareness of risk potential. Ultimately, this collaborative approach not only reduced accidents and saved money but also demonstrated the potential savings from preventing accidents before they occurred.
What are some hidden risks that fleet managers may not be aware of?
When discussing risk exposure with a client’s fleet management team, the primary goal is to control what you can and measure what works to reduce risk. Fleet managers often focus on immediate, daily concerns such as: “Are my vehicles on the road? Are my drivers where they need to be? Are we maintaining our vehicles properly?”
Professional fleet managers understand that accidents will occur simply due to having a number of vehicles on the road for extended periods of time. Where we can be assistive is in evaluating external risks as part of the preventable and non-preventable matrix; decisions about who is on the road and when, then carry a potential dollar cost.
When safety and fleet risk awareness are broken down into the budgetary impacts that affects all areas of a client’s organization, it becomes easier to gain the buy-in needed to take responsibility for risk management and promote a safety culture from the top down. This should start with owners and executives, extend to the board of directors, and then cascade through the fleet management team.
Everyone views risk differently depending on their role. The CFO focuses on financial risks, such as the total cost of vehicle repairs and rising insurance premiums. The legal counsel considers reputational risk and potential accident litigation. If a vehicle with company name or branding is involved in an accident that makes the news, negative press could impact an otherwise positive corporate image. There’s also the impact in Human Resources, who must address the risk of a driver being injured or potentially disabled.
When we discuss the complexity of fleet risk, we break it down to see how it affects each part of the company. Then we bring everything together to work with the fleet manager on each level of exposure. That’s what we focus on in detail at Element.
How has AI impacted risk management?
As many experts have noted, AI’s effectiveness depends on the direction it is given, the questions being asked, and the data it is trained on. In fleet and risk management, AI has access to vast amounts of data, including historical accident statistics, vehicle safety specifications, and the latest safety advancements. The challenge is determining which data is most relevant to the problems a client is trying to solve. Each fleet operation is different, and specifics matter.
Before AI could accumulate and analyze accident causes of loss and behavioral change, fleet risk and safety programs were largely based on the highest-risk and most heavily regulated vehicle classes. Now there is the ability to take those high standards and adapt them based on vehicle type, operational use, and jurisdiction.
Consider an example from the insurance sector. A fleet may include 500 vehicles across all 50 states and operate in industries such as construction, services, or pharmaceuticals, with vehicle types ranging from tractor-trailers to sedans. How do you create a single risk management plan for that entire fleet? You could manually review each state’s statistics, loss cost factors, and premium rates, or you could work with the client to analyze this complex data more efficiently using AI. This allows for the development of subset programs tailored to the fleet’s specific makeup.
There will always be a need for human touch and guidance in fleet management. That is inherent to the industry, even as fully autonomous vehicles are being tested across North America. The ability to use AI-driven assessment and measurement tools helps bridge the gap between vehicle technology and driver integration for fleet managers.
What advice do you have for fleets regarding risk management?
There are many discussions about what managing the total cost of risk means for fleets, whether through safety programs, vehicle specification selection, internal controls, or operational structure. Fleet owners and managers need to understand which plans and structures work best for them. Any strategy that is tailored to your specific vehicles, drivers, costs, structure, and industry can be effective, as long as it remains flexible.
No matter the fleet type, the most important factors are execution, measurement of success metrics, and visibility for those impacted by the plan. Consistency is also critical. Achieving it requires buy-in from everyone, from executive leadership to drivers. A plan is only as strong as its execution and follow-through.
Fleet managers should also be clear on their goals. These might include reducing insurance premiums by 10% through fewer accidents or improving efficiency in fuel and maintenance costs. Clear goals help align the entire organization. Transparency around total cost of risk provides motivation. What may initially be viewed as an expensive safety initiative, such as questioning the need for a $100,000 telematics system, becomes a strategic risk management investment once total exposure costs are understood and reduced.
The message I always share is that fleet management carries a higher duty of care. Our clients share the roads every day as part of their business operations. Awareness of risk is only the first step. Effective risk management is the shared objective.
To learn how Element Fleet Management can help you reduce risk and save money, click here.
