Case Study: Managing airbag recalls in aging fleets

In the automotive industry, aging fleets present a unique and increasingly complex challenge. Vehicles that remain on the road for decades, often changing ownership multiple times, create significant barriers to effective recall execution. Maintaining high completion rates in these environments requires more than technical fixes; it demands precision data strategies, dynamic consumer engagement, and a remediation framework built for adaptability.

As vehicles age, their traceability diminishes. Ownership records fragment, contact details become outdated, and traditional outreach methods lose effectiveness. Yet, the safety risks remain—and in some cases, escalate. For manufacturers, this means that recall success hinges not only on identifying the defect, but on navigating the operational and logistical intricacies of long-lifecycle product stewardship.

When a global automaker faced a critical airbag defect in vehicles spanning 15–20 years of circulation, Sedgwick Brand Protection delivered a recall strategy engineered for resilience, responsiveness, and regulatory rigor.

Challenge  

The automaker identified a defect that could cause airbags to deploy unexpectedly, posing serious risks to drivers and passengers. While the technical remedy was straightforward, two primary challenges emerged:

Fragmented ownership data: Over the course of 15–20 years, many vehicles had changed hands multiple times. This created significant gaps in traceability, making it difficult to locate current owners and initiate outreach with confidence.

Parts availability at scale: The sheer volume of affected vehicles strained the supply chain, threatening the automaker’s ability to deliver timely repairs and maintain recall momentum.

These challenges were predictable, but they required a proactive, risk-prioritized strategy. The automaker needed to reach the highest-risk vehicles first, adapt to shifting conditions, and maintain compliance across jurisdictions.

Solution

Sedgwick Brand Protection deployed a comprehensive recall solution tailored to the realities of aging fleets and fragmented data ecosystems. The approach integrated advanced data intelligence, multi-channel engagement, and flexible remediation pathways:

• Advanced data cleansing and appending: Sedgwick enriched millions of contact records with up-to-date ownership details and preferred communication channels, restoring traceability and enabling targeted outreach.
• Multi-channel consumer engagement: Outreach efforts combined automated notifications, live call-center support, and personalized follow-up calls for non-responders, ensuring no high-risk owner was left behind.
• Real-time parts-to-workshop matching:  A proprietary platform aligned available spare parts with dealer capacity, optimizing repair scheduling and minimizing delays.
• Dual remediation pathways: Consumers were offered a choice: immediate repair or vehicle buy-back. Field agents facilitated in-home inspections and key retrieval, removing friction from the process.
• Dynamic risk assessment and prioritization: Sedgwick’s strategy allowed for real-time pivots based on parts availability, consumer response, and external conditions, ensuring the recall remained agile and effective.

This end-to-end framework transformed a complex recall into a coordinated, compliant, and consumer-centric operation.

Results  

By proactively addressing each challenge, the automaker achieved an efficient, compliant recall:

• Accelerated remediation: As parts became available, the strategy shifted from partial buy-backs to comprehensive repairs, maximizing safety outcomes and minimizing disruption.
• Agile execution under pressure: Despite supply-chain constraints, the recall maintained momentum, demonstrating the power of a flexible, risk-aligned approach.
• Scalable framework for future recalls: The solution proved adaptable across jurisdictions and risk profiles, setting a new standard for long-lifecycle product recalls.

For over 30 years, Sedgwick Brand Protection has partnered with manufacturers on the most demanding recalls. From long-lifecycle products and multi-jurisdictional compliance to hazard-sensitive components, our expertise safeguard consumer trust, uphold regulatory standards, and protect brand integrity.  

Key takeaways

• Anticipate and mitigate predictable challenges: Map data gaps, parts constraints, and capacity limitations before launch to reduce friction and improve outcomes.
• Invest in robust data intelligence: Maintaining contact with owners of aging products requires enriched, validated data and dynamic outreach capabilities.
• Design flexible remediation protocols: Build pathways that can evolve—from buy-back to repair—as conditions change, ensuring continuity and consumer satisfaction.
• Partner with proven specialists: A recall provider with scalable resources and localized expertise ensures resilient execution, even under the most demanding conditions.

About Sedgwick Brand Protection

Brand and reputation are the most valuable and vulnerable assets a business has. Brands embody everything a business does, and its customers expect. 

Nothing says more about a company’s commitment to its customers than its efforts to uphold promises of safety, quality, and service. That’s why companies are often remembered more for how they handle an in-market challenge than for the problem itself. We know what it takes to manage recalls in a way that upholds your commitments to customers, supply chain partners, and regulators. 

Trusted by the world’s leading brands and businesses, Sedgwick Brand Protection works in partnership to manage the risks and minimize the impacts of in-market business and product crises. Since 1995, we have managed more than 7,000 of the most sensitive and time-critical product recall and remediation programs, spanning 150+ countries and 50+ languages. 

To discover more about our product recall and incident response solutions, visit: https://www.sedgwick.com/product-recall

15–20 year

vehicle lifecycle managed

Real-time

parts-to-workshop matching platform deployed

Dual

remediation pathways offered: repair or buy-back

Multi-channel

outreach strategy executed