Surprisingly, one of the things that have helped policy holders save money on their car insurance premium rates in recent decades is the fact that it is now easier to catch them out when it is necessary to charge them more. Whenever someone tries to get a car insurance policy through a company, it is the companies responsibility to find out what the risk is attached to that person. This is found out through that person’s claim history. Years ago, finding out this information was tedious work. Car insurance companies had to first simply believe what the person told them, and then try to verify it by tediously following up with their car insurance companies as well as looking in paperwork and databases.
Nowadays, though? They can find out what you have in your past like that, and this is both helpful to them and you, because they aren’t the only ones who have access to that kind of information. Where do they get the information from? Well, there are a couple of databases that are used the most often by car insurance companies.
- CLUE, or Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange
- A-PLUS, or Automated Property Loss Underwriting System
Somewhat unhappily for A-PLUS, even the reports sent out by them are often called CLUE reports, because CLUE is the most popular and oft used database. With the information provided by these databases, car insurance companies are able to see what sort of claims have been filed by the person who is requesting the car insurance policy and the past, and also what sort of claims have been filed for the car they are requesting insurance for, even if those claims were not filed by the same person and were even perhaps filed before they owned the vehicle.
Some dispute has come up over the usage of such reports in many states, and ten of them have laws regulating the reports. The debate comes from the fact that the claims in the report that are listed might not mean anything. For example, your car insurance company wants you to call in and report any car insurance accident that you get into, even if you don’t intend to file a claim. Even if this ‘claim’ is for a small accident, a little bump, and you never receive any money for it, the car insurance company still has to make a file for the claim which will then show up on your report. Other types of alleged claims that show up on CLUE reports are
- Closed claims
- Claims that were not really covered
- Fraudulent claims
However, while most states have not forbidden the usage of these claims reports when car insurance companies are deciding how much to charge someone for their car insurance premium, many have regulated them to the extent that if the car insurance company chooses to use one of these databases to find out what your claims history is, they have to tell you that you have used it. Whenever you go to get a new car insurance policy or get a new vehicle, it might be a good idea to get a CLUE report so that you can know what the car insurance companies are seeing.