Your car insurance rate is determined by a number of different factors including your age, whether you are single or married, the location where you live, your car make/model and your driving record. These are the ones that you are most likely aware of. However, there is another important factor that can have significant impact on your car insurance rate - your claim history, which is available from a database that can be accessed by any car insurance company. In some countries even your credit history can be taken into account when preparing car insurance estimates.
Compare Car Insurance Rates
When providing quotes, a car insurance company will compare your claims history against their insurance loss history. One company will have loss history that is different from the loss history of another insurance company for the same driver profile, vehicle and coverage. This will sometimes result in significant differences in car insurance rates from company to company, and this is why it is so important always to compare rates obtained from at least five different companies.
Online quotes make it easy to shop around for car insurance. Savings on your car insurance can be very significant and in the range of hundreds of dollars. Check which company is offering you the best deal based on your driver profile, your car make/model and given coverage. You could also obtain car insurance quotes by calling your local car insurance companies. Make a list of at least 5 companies, and a list of coverage types that you need, i.e. liability, theft, collision, etc. Create a spreadsheet with 5 columns, with each company in the heading of each column, and with rows equal to the number of coverage options plus rows for the contact information and the quotes. You can then start calling each company and hope for the best (hoping that you would be talking to a “knowledgeable agent” and not put on a “priority sequence” hold…). Apparently, it is much easier and smarter to obtain fast and accurate car insurance quotes online, and save hours of time, not to mention hundreds of dollars saved annually from car insurance.
