Personal Lines Tips You Can Use

One of the best ways for agents and brokers to impress and build credibility with their clients is to provide advice and suggestions that help them reduce their risk of loss and their insurance expenditures. And if you are like many insurance professionals, you are continuously seeking unobtrusive ways to contact your customers to remind them that you are there for them. Providing cost-saving risk management advice is certainly one way to do this. Many firms are also in search of high-quality content to include on their Web sites to encourage people to visit and to attract search engine traffic. Thus, we offer you the monthly "Tip You Can Use" in each issue of Personal Lines Pilot to help you achieve all of these objectives. You are free to use this month's tip any way you wish, subject to the license terms included below. Simply copy the tip, paste it into your Web site or newsletter, and make any formatting adjustments, being sure to leave the copyright attribution and Web links as per the license agreement below.

This Month's Tip

Lower Your Auto Insurance Costs

Automobile insurance premiums often take a big bite out of a family’s budget. You may, however, be paying too much for this coverage. The following are several approaches you can use to reduce your auto insurance costs.

Choose higher deductibles, particularly if you currently have a low collision or other-than-collision deductible, such as $100 or $250. Increasing your deductible from $250 to $500 or $1,000, for example, can reduce your collision and other-than-collision premium by 15 to 35 percent.
Eliminate collision and other-than-collision coverage on older, less valuable cars. If your car is worth less than $1,500, it may be wiser and cheaper in the long run to just retain this physical damage exposure. Used car valuations are available online at Kelley Blue Book.
Maintain an excellent credit record, since insurance companies are increasingly using credit scores to price auto insurance policies. Consumers with poor credit often pay more for auto insurance.
Buy a “low-profile” automobile. Before you purchase a new or used car, check into the auto insurance costs. Automobile models that are expensive to maintain and have higher theft and collision frequency rates tend to have higher insurance costs.
Take advantage of multipolicy discounts by keeping your homeowners and auto policy with one insurer. Likewise, take advantage of multicar discounts by having all autos on one insurance policy.
Seek out other auto insurance discounts (which can vary by state and by insurance company), such as defensive driving, good student, low-mileage auto, alcohol awareness training, air bags, antilock brakes, claim-free experience, and long-term customer.

Get more personal lines insurance and risk management tips and ideas from IRMI.

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Important Reproduction License Terms

We're happy to make personal lines tips available to you at no charge, but we must make a few requirements to protect ourselves and our intellectual property rights. We require that you leave in place the IRMI copyright notice included at the bottom of each of these tips to acknowledge that a significant degree of originality was required and utilized in the creation of these articles. If the tips are included on a Web site or in an e-mail or electronic newsletter, we also require that you leave in place the active link to the IRMI Web site that we have included there. If you include a number of the tips on a single page in your Web site, it is only necessary to include the IRMI copyright and active link in one place on that page.

While these tips were carefully researched by our personal lines experts, they are of necessity general in nature and not intended as legal, consulting, or other professional advice. They may also become outdated over time as business conditions and insurance industry practices change. We provide them to you "as is," and it is your responsibility to assure that the advice they provide is applicable to your geographic area, the insurers you represent, your state's insurance regulations and environment, etc. If you place them on your Web site, you should also review them from time to time to assure that they are still up-to-date and correct given changes in the insurance marketplace, regulatory environment, or practices. We are providing you with the use of these tips at no cost to you, and your use of them indicates that you agree that you will not attempt to hold IRMI responsible for any liability or damages arising from your use of these tips.

Lastly, while we assume no obligation to notify you that any of these tips should be removed from your Web site for any reason, such as their becoming out-of-date, you do agree to remove them as soon as possible if you ever receive a request from us to do so.