Auto insurance quotes and other insurance products

One of the main differences between auto insurance and other types of insurance services is that if you choose not to insure your car it's not just your personal choice but a legal offense. All other insurance products are purely optional, even though life can make them rather necessary in certain situations. For example, health insurance isn't required by law but imagine going to the hospital for care without having an insurance plan - you'll spend thousands of dollars out of own pocket. House insurance isn't required as well but in case your house gets burnt down wouldn't it be much better if you had the insurance in the first place? Insurance products in general are a great method for minimizing your risks and eliminating the financial impact of situations that are beyond your control or forecast. But if you put your mind to it you can actually optimize your costs by using different types of insurance products at the same time.

Let's take a typical situation within most families in this country. You have at least one car in the household, so there's an auto insurance policy on your hands, all the family members have health insurance and the house is probably insured too. This leaves us with three insurance policies most often purchased from different providers. Of course, it's better to get auto insurance quotes from a company that specializes in providing auto insurance and having your house covered with a company that focuses on real estate insurance. It sounds very logic from the first view. But if we say that you may actually get better rates when buying all these things from a single insurer?

Of course, not all insurance companies provide the entire spectrum of insurance services as even large insurers tend to put their focus on specific types of products. But there are still companies that can provide you with all the basic insurance policies you may need starting with car insurance to house insurance. And they usually provide significant discounts to customers who actually choose to get all the policies from them at once. Sounds very attractive, doesn't it?

In reality, of course, you don't buy all types of insurance at once. You get auto insurance quotes when you buy an auto and start looking for home insurance after moving into your new house and that rarely takes place at the same time. Usually you would just compare quotes for the same types of products form different companies without even thinking about getting it from the provider you have other insurance products purchased from. But now you know that this option is there to consider and you should think about it every time you get another insurance product.

For example, you're comparing auto insurance quotes for a car you've bought for your spouse. First of all, consider getting it insured with the same company that has your primary car covered - most insurers offer significant rate cuts when you cover tow or more vehicles under the same policy. But even if the auto insurance quotes you get from the company you already have policies with aren't the most competitive learn how big is the discount they offer for having different insurance products with them - it will certainly make any policy really attractive.

Vehicle insurance and driver's age

There are many things that affect a driver's insurance rates. Starting with the car he or she drives to the place where its registered - all these small pieces of data are analyzed by the insurance company and used to determine the rates they'll charge this particular customer. But of all the factors that the insurance companies will use there's one particular piece of data that you just can't do anything about - your age. That's right, your age also has impact on how much you will have to pay for having your car insured. And for some age groups this impact isn't as good as they would like it to be.

As with any other factor involved in calculating insurance rates, the age of the driver helps the insurance company to determine the likelihood of filing a claim. In other words, from the insurer's perspective your age can determine the probability of you having a traffic accident during a given period of time. And if this may seem quite vague they have the statistics on their side. According to statistical analysis different age groups tend to produce different numbers of accidents with teens and seniors being the most likely to have traffic problems while the middle age being the safest of all drivers. Let's look closer at this observation.

Drivers aged less than 25 tend to get the highest car insurance quotes of all age groups because they produce more accidents in general. First of all, young drivers lack the driving experience for avoiding certain risky situations. Moreover, teens tend to behave more risky in general thanks to the well known attitude common in this particular age. So we have a mix of factors that allows the insurers to act as they usually do - set higher rates. Of course, this doesn't mean that all teen drivers are necessarily bad drivers. But it's when the majority determines the rates for the minority and there's little you can do about it.

Middle age drivers on the other hand already have plenty of driving experience on their hands to behave more responsibly on the road. Besides, most people tend to get more cautious and laid back with age that's why you won't see so many housewives or business executives speeding on the highways as there are teens doing such things. That's why drivers aged between 25 and 55 tend to have the lowest car insurance quotes in general.

However, at a certain point age stops being an advantage and turns into a disadvantage. This happens around the age of 55 and goes onwards with each year passing. From this age the quotes you get start to increase steadily and around 65 will go up even at a faster phase. This is explained by the fact that senior drivers tend to produce more accidents than the average driver yet the reasons in this case are different from those at teen age. Older car owners usually develop health conditions that may affect their driving abilities and speed of reaction. That's why they usually get higher car insurance quotes just like teens do.

A reference to the Competition Commission is on the cards

With the latest revelations about Barclays and other banks lying to manipulate the LIBOR, and the HSBC at the centre of money laundering activities in America, we’re used to the idea of the banking sector ripping us off. But we somehow tend to think the rest of our capitalist business community works more fairly. As if! With G4S coving itself with glory over providing security to the Olympics and the newspapers hacking into our computers and voicemail, it can hardly come as a surprise the insurance sector is also not working properly and denying us cheap car insurance.

In June, the Office of Fair Trading announced a provisional decision to refer the British insurance industry to the Competition Commission. Although the final decision is delayed until October, we can be hopeful this is now a formality. The OFT accused the industry of being dysfunctional and costing drivers an estimated 225 million pounds a year in additional premium payments. The way the scam works is that, when we have an accident, the insurers refer us to garages to make the repairs, or sell or rent us replacement vehicles. The insurance companies receive a percentage fee for each referral. This is reflected in the price the insurers pay these garages for repairs or car hire companies for replacement vehicles. The sale prices of replacement vehicles can be inflated or the period of hire can be recorded as longer than that actually enjoyed. The result? Whether you are the at-fault driver or the victim, everyone’s premiums rise. In each insurance company’s accounts, the payments made on your behalf to repair or replace are described as a cost, but a percentage is actually a concealed profit element for delivering the service the insurers are already contracted to deliver.

The experts expect the Commission to ban the insurers from continuing to add these referral fees. It’s not clear whether this will produce cheap car insurance. Since some insurers make most of their profit from these fees, the stock market valuation of the companies affected has fallen. Perhaps appropriately, one of the companies most affected is Direct Line. This has been preparing to float on the stock exchange. Perhaps it will now delay. Ironically, Direct Line is owned by the RBS Bank so you can see where the culture to rip off customers comes from.