Inside SGI's Accredited Repair Program: How RPS, Drift, and Performance Tracking Actually Work

Key findings

1. 1SGI's Accredited Auto Body Program is governed by published accreditation criteria, a documented Realized Parts Savings (RPS), and the Auto Body Repair Standards manual that SGI distributes to accredited shops.
2. 2RPS at SGI weighs estimate accuracy, supplement discipline, cycle time, documentation completeness, customer experience, and workmanship — closely paralleling the structure used by other Canadian public insurers.
3. 3The dominant source of avoidable RPS movement at SGI shops is supplement frequency on items that were determinable at write-up — particularly ADAS calibration, R&I sets, and OEM-procedure-mandated lines that arrive at supplement rather than at the initial estimate.
4. 4SGI's program structure rewards documentation-first estimating: scan reports, calibration printouts, OEM position-statement citations, and material-cost worksheets attached at write-up materially improve approval-cycle speed.
5. 5The RPS framework is operationally most useful when treated as a daily metric, not a quarterly review artifact. Drift correctable in days when surfaced in days; drift uncorrectable in weeks when surfaced in weeks.

Body

1. What the SGI program is

SGI is the auto insurance arm of the Saskatchewan Government Insurance Crown corporation. Through SGI Auto Fund, SGI administers the universal auto insurance program for Saskatchewan plate holders and operates the claim and repair frameworks that those policies fund. The Accredited Auto Body Program is the operational vehicle through which Saskatchewan shops apply, qualify, and operate against published standards.

The program rests on three documents that any accredited shop should treat as canonical: the Accredited Auto Body Program agreement and accreditation criteria, the Auto Body Repair Standards manual (rate, procedure, and documentation rules), and the Realized Parts Savings (RPS) framework that measures shop performance against the program. All three are published to accredited shops, all three are versioned, and all three define the operational contract between SGI and the shop.

2. The Auto Body Repair Standards

SGI's Auto Body Repair Standards manual functions as the rate-and-procedure source of truth for accredited shops. It defines posted body labor rate, refinish labor and material rate, allowances for non-reusable parts, sublet rules, and procedure-specific guidance for common operations. It also documents SGI's expectations on photo capture, scan reporting, and supporting documentation at write-up.

The manual is not a coverage instrument — it does not arbitrate 'should this be paid?' It is a procedure instrument: 'when this is written, here is the rate, the allowance, and the documentation expected.' Estimates that align with the manual at write-up are paid as written. Estimates that diverge generate touches that show up under multiple RPS factors at once: estimate accuracy, supplement discipline, and documentation completeness.

The single highest-leverage estimating practice on SGI claims is mechanical alignment with the published manual. The numbers and procedure citations come from the manual; the discipline is in attaching them at write-up.

3. The Realized Parts Savings (RPS) at SGI

SGI's RPS is the multi-factor framework under which accredited shops are measured. It is calculated from data SGI already holds — claim records, estimates, supplements, cycle time, and customer-experience surveys — and is reported back to shops on a regular cadence. The factor list parallels the broader Canadian public-insurer model:

RPS at SGI is not a punitive scoring instrument; it is the carrier-side health metric of the program. The score signals whether the program is working as designed and identifies coaching opportunities at the shop level. Shops that treat RPS as a coachable, daily operating metric improve materially faster than shops that treat it as a quarterly audit artifact.

4. Where Saskatchewan shops typically drift on RPS

RocketPros corpus analysis of SGI estimates indicates that the avoidable sources of RPS drift on Saskatchewan claims cluster into the same broad set seen across Canadian public-insurer programs:

1. 1Supplement frequency on items determinable at write-up — non-reusable parts on replaced panels, R&I sets, foam and corrosion-protection lines that the OEM procedure called for, calibration lines that should have appeared at initial estimate.
2. 2Calibration documentation gaps — the calibration line is on the estimate, but the calibration printout or dynamic-drive log is not attached, converting an otherwise clean line into a multi-touch event.
3. 3Refinish material rate / paint material lines without an attached material-cost worksheet. The manual specifies the rate; the calculation is what gets disputed, and the worksheet collapses the disagreement.
4. 4Pre/post-scan reports stored locally rather than attached to the Mitchell estimate. The scan exists; the documentation does not travel with the line.
5. 5Cycle-time slippage from parts ordered after teardown rather than at write-up — the same effect documented in the broader North American literature, with the additional Saskatchewan wrinkle that parts logistics in rural and northern Saskatchewan compound the lag.

5. The Saskatchewan-specific operational pattern

Saskatchewan's geography and weather produce a few program-specific operational patterns that matter to RPS management. Hail damage volume in southern Saskatchewan is materially higher than the Canadian average; SGI manages that volume through a documented hail program with its own intake and repair workflow. Winter-driven collisions concentrate seasonal severity. Wildlife collisions — particularly deer and moose — are a significant portion of the rural claim mix and produce a distinctive damage pattern (front bumper, hood, headlamp, ADAS sensor stack) that intersects almost every modern OEM calibration trigger.

These factors do not change the program rules. They change the volume distribution within the rules. Shops in regions with high wildlife-collision exposure see calibration triggers more often than the provincial average; shops in hail belts see refinish and panel work concentrated into shorter windows. The RPS framework is robust to both — the rules apply the same — but the shops that perform best on RPS adjust their write-up workflow to the volume mix they actually see.

6. How RocketPros aligns to the SGI program

RocketPros is independent software. It is not an SGI partner product, and it does not override SGI's published rules. The relationship is upstream: RocketPros analyzes the Mitchell estimate as the estimator writes it, surfaces the lines that the Auto Body Repair Standards and the OEM position statement would expect for that VIN, attaches the documentation requirement, and reports the resulting RPS-relevant metrics back to the shop daily.

On an SGI claim, that means three things in practice: (a) the calibration triggers that apply per VIN are surfaced at write-up with the OEM position statement cited; (b) non-reusable-part R&I sets, foam, sealer, and corrosion-protection lines are flagged when the OEM procedure requires them; and (c) the shop's RPS-relevant metrics — supplement frequency, calibration incidence, documentation completeness, cycle time — are visible at the claim level rather than at month-end. The published SGI standard is the source of truth in every case; the technology's role is to make compliance mechanical.

7. The carrier perspective on Saskatchewan's program

From SGI's program-management perspective, the operational interventions that produce the largest combined impact on indemnity, cycle time, and customer experience are the same ones documented across the broader public-insurer literature. Pre-authorization of OEM-required calibrations per VIN at FNOL, standardized documentation at write-up, and supplement-frequency reduction through estimate-completeness work upstream all compound the program's existing structure rather than re-litigating it. Saskatchewan's program is well-positioned to compound these levers: the rate, procedure, and performance frameworks are already published, mature, and predictable.

The customer-side outcome — Saskatchewan policyholders whose repairs are faster, cleaner, and more durable — is the same outcome that benefits accredited shops on the RPS scorecard. The interests are aligned by design.

Frequently asked

Citations

1. [1]SGI — Auto body repair program for accredited shops (program documents, bulletins, accreditation framework, Auto Body Repair Standards distribution).https://sgi.sk.ca
2. [2]SGI — Annual Report (Saskatchewan Auto Fund). Claims volume, repair-program statistics, and customer-experience reporting.https://sgi.sk.ca/annual-reports
3. [3]Saskatchewan Government Insurance Act, S.S. 1980, c. S-31 — statutory framework establishing SGI's repair program authority.https://publications.saskatchewan.ca
4. [4]Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), Auto Insurance in Canada — provincial program structure and Canadian severity benchmarks.https://www.ibc.ca
5. [5]Statistics Canada, Consumer Price Index — vehicle parts, maintenance and repairs (Table 18-10-0004-01).https://www150.statcan.gc.ca
6. [6]I-CAR Repairability Technical Support (RTS) database — OEM-procedure citation source.https://rts.i-car.com
7. [7]OEM1Stop.com — consortium repair-procedure portal aggregating OEM position statements applicable to vehicles in the Saskatchewan parc.https://www.oem1stop.com

What this looks like inside RocketPros

The audit logic, scoring, and documentation patterns in this paper map directly to four RocketPros modules. If you want this applied to your shop's real estimates, start with the module that fits the workflow you're trying to fix.

• RPS ComplianceTrack MPI, SGI, and DRP program risk before it affects scorecards.
• Estimate AnalysisCatch missed labor, materials, parts, and documentation gaps before submission.
• AutomationRead saved Mitchell, CCC, and Audatex files without manual upload.
• ADAS CalibrationSurface calibration triggers tied to sensors and OEM procedures.

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