Insurance agent reveals the truth about auto insurance rates

The main factor driving auto insurance rates in Florida is your credit history. Each insurance company our agency represents has 45 or more levels of internal rates for each client. When scoring policies are applied, the first thing that happens is that your credit file is reviewed. About 15 years ago, insurance companies were looking for ways to make insurance more predictable and began to notice that a person’s credit score could predict whether a person was more likely to have accidents.

The lower the credit score, the more accidents occurred. They found a direct correlation that could apply to anyone. The theory goes that when people have financial problems they tend to have more accidents. After writing many policies over the past 15 years, I have found this way of writing auto insurance to be very accurate.

Other considerations also come into play. Your current bodily injury limit is very important. The higher the limit you have on your policy, the better your rates. Insurance companies find that customers with higher bodily injury limits have fewer claims.

Tickets and accidents are the third stage of the rating system. Most preferred programs do not allow major speeding tickets or more than 1 claim. If your credit score is high, many companies place less emphasis on your tickets. Young drivers are another interesting story. If you have young drivers, many companies give your teen a rating on every car in their household and some only on the car they drive. We take that into consideration when we write policies for our clients. Lastly, the cars you drive have little bearing on the rates and the color doesn’t matter either.