Insurance and Credit

The car insurance business has been forever changed by the Internet. In fact, the business today bears little resemblance to what it was before the Information Age first dawned in 1992. Before the World Wide Web took over, most people settled in with one company and stuck with them for home and auto insurance. Not so today. The churn numbers due to being able to get auto insurance quotes online continue to diverge from home – auto combos with the same company.

Many accuse the insurance industry with a litany of failures in responding to customer needs. Loyalty bonuses, common in many businesses, simply are not out there in the car and home insurance field, and they should be. The problem of insurance skimmers, that is, companies that specialize in low rates for older drivers, continues to give actuarial statisticians fits. Given this failing, many insurance companies find themselves needing to adjust to the new mode of delivering auto insurance quotes online.

A consequence of this, however, is that it has meant that certain insurers are skimming off low-risk drivers, leaving those willing to insure the typical new driver, male, with significantly lower ability to allocate risk. This is why insurance rates for new drivers have increased so dramatically that it has increased the number of males under 25 driving illegally, with no insurance at all. There are on-going debates in actuarial theory about the problem.

But higher rates for young drivers aside, shopping for car insurance online is an eye-opening experience. Before the internet, consumers had to spend hours going through the phone book, punching their way through a voice menu only to wind up most times leaving their name and number on some agent or broker’s answering machine. And of course there was the time spent handling the call backs, keeping track of the quotes, doing call backs, and on and on and on.

Surveys of those who do shop for car insurance online consistently rank “Convenience” as the number one reason people shop on the internet for car insurance. They love the ability to get an instant quote without having to trade voice mails, or even speak with anyone.

For many, playing with the answers to the yes – no question you have to answer to get the quote is an eye opener. In these tight economic times, being able to see how your insurance rate will change if you buy the Honda Accord as compared to if you go for the Echo, may well be the differentiator in more than one buyer’s mind.

Perhaps one of the most attractive and informative features of otaining an auto insurance quote online besides shopping for car insurance is when you decide to shop for a new car. Many sites that offer online auto insurance quotes have a feature where people can find out the different rates per vehicle. When evaluating comparable models that vary greatly in dealer invoice prices, the car insurance cost can be a deal breaker or maker.

Are you looking for alternatives to your current car insurance and want low cost auto insurance? Maybe you’ve come to realize that your premiums are through the roof even though you’re clean as a whistle when it comes to driving. Not to mention your car is so old that fuel injection was the wave of the future when you bought your set of wheels.

One of the first things you can do to qualify for low cost auto insurance is to make sure that you have an excellent driving record. Most people can request a discount if they’ve been accident free and have not incurred any traffic violations for a period of at least three years. Not all insurance companies will offer it automatically, so check to make sure you’re eligible and claim your discount with your insurer.

In all likelihood, you’ve kept the same insurance that you had when you first bought the car. You might have even gotten what seemed like a low cost auto insurance policy from your insurance agent at the time because you bought a car that had great crash test safety ratings from the government. But you never knew to check things like industry data for the car model like repair record, cost of repairs, accident and theft statistics. Believe it or not, all these factors influence rates for comprehensive and collision coverage ..

A car’s safety rating is not the only criterion for setting rates. The type of car, its sticker price along with your own credit rating can impact whether you can get a low cost auto insurance policy. Even if you have good credit, if you opt for a sleek, pricey Ferrari, you can expect to pay an even higher premium. Obviously settling for a sturdy family sedan would dramatically lower your risk profile.

One of the easier ways to get low cost auto insurance is to raise your deductible. This is the amount that you would have to pay before insurance payment a claim kicks in. Most people think that a $100 deductible is adequate, but in truth you should consider taking a $1000, or at least $500, deductible. This results in a substantial savings even over a short period of 2 to 3 years. You’re better off accumulating the savings to allocate towards your deductible.

If you are not a frequent driver or don’t use your car to commute to work, then there’s a good chance you can qualify for a low annual mileage discount. Most companies will require some evidence of this, but it’s one way of getting low cost auto insurance. Dropping your comprehensive and collision coverage will also reduce your premiums if your car is older and it’s no longer makes economic sense to maintain it.

To assist you in locating a low cost auto insurance policy, it would be a good idea to search using any of the rate quote services that are now available. To get a quote for a car make or model, you simply answer a few questions concerning your driving history along with the car information and in seconds you can have quotes from several companies. If you’re shopping for a car, this can be a tremendous help in deciding what will fit within your budget.