His colleagues refer to him as the “King of Trailers.” But Randy Sellhorn, senior product manager for Foremost, says you don’t have to be an RV expert to succeed in this niche.

As a member of the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association’s (RVIA) marketing communication committee, Sellhorn understands the unique requirements of securing the proper coverage for RV-owning clients—and offers tips for independent agents who want to do the same.

IA: What can we expect RV insurance pricing to look like for the coming year?

Sellhorn: What I would expect for the rest of the year is rising prices. I don’t think it’s anything dramatic, but weather particularly in the southern-tier states has not been kind to us. In the last few years, certainly during the recession, there was a consolidation of RV dealerships that do retail and repairs. The reduction of people selling and repairing RVs has driven up our hourly rates and some of our estimates.

How closely is RV insurance linked to the general auto market? Is there any give and take or overlap between the two lines?

You have two classifications of recreational vehicles: motor homes and towable RVs. How closely is motor home linked to general automobile insurance? Not as tightly as you would expect. Certainly the liability fraud that happens in the automobile business would affect the RV business, but they’re far different vehicles. Most motor homes have a gross vehicle weight rating more than 10,000 pounds; most automobiles are less than 10,000 pounds.

When thinking about towable travel trailers, fifth wheel and tent campers, they don’t behave or act anything like automobiles because nobody has a travel trailer for their daily driver. And the repair costs are completely different. There is no flat-rate manual for motor homes and travel trailers like there is for automobiles, so there’s some disconnect there. Travel trailer losses are more closely related to weather, so those losses behave more like property than they do automobile, where liability and collision are the primary carriers of loss.

Have you seen any coverage developments that will change the RV insurance landscape for the rest of the year? Any emerging classes?

RVs, motorhomes and travel trailers used to make up about 60% of the landscape, while towable RVs, including travel trailers, fifth wheels, pickup campers and tent campers, were at 40%. This year, about 80% of all RVs built are travel trailers, fifth wheels, tent campers and pickup campers, and 20% will be motorhomes. That’s a huge shift in customer interests from motorized to towable RVs. We see this happening because the vehicle fleet  in the United States is generally larger and more capable of towing some sort of RV. So buyers ask, “Why would I buy a motor home if my daily driver will pull something?”

The other thing that is happening is that people aren’t pulling the RV every weekend. They’re taking it to a destination, setting it up and leaving it in a campground for the summer. They use it as a vacation residence rather than to go a different location or place every weekend.

Those two things happening together create a complexity for insurance coverage that agents need to be aware of. If I’m using it as a secondary residence but I’m insuring it as an addition to my automobile policy, how am I covering all the secondary residence exposures I have when it’s sitting in the campgrounds? You can insure an RV for the physical damage aspect, but there’s a liability aspect that comes with having it out there on a campsite. Agents need to make sure not only is the vehicle covered, but the liability exposure and the stuff they have in it is covered, too.

Any tips or advice for how agents can navigate these challenges if they’re looking to become more successful in the RV insurance market?

Two words: cross sell. The RVIA reports that one in eight vehicle-owning households own an RV—that’s 12%. So if I have a thousand vehicle-owning households in my agency, I should have 120 RVs insured. I would bet you a dollar to donuts, based upon our research of agents and people I know in the business, they don’t have anywhere close to that because they haven’t asked for it. Why ask for that? The more policies you have with a household, the better your retention of that household. An RV owner is going to be a substantial customer because an RV is an out-and-out, unadulterated, purely discretionary purchase. These people have some bucks to blow on a toy. About 86% of all RV owners are married and a lot of them are double income with no children at home anymore. They’re just the kind of people you want at your agency.

If you want to be successful in the RV business, cross sell what you are already a specialist at right now. You don’t have to be the “King of Trailers.” That doesn’t mean you insure these things by slapping them on an automobile policy or endorsing them as some other adjacent structure to a homeowners policy—RVs have a uniqueness to them that require some specialty coverages. But if you take the time to be at least competent at it, not necessarily an expert, you can be very successful with your current book of customers.

Jacquelyn Connelly is IA senior editor.