Collision and Comprehensive Insurance in Louisiana For New Car
Reader’s Question:
I’m planning to buy a new car here in Louisiana. Will my collision and comprehensive insurance rates be affected by the model of my car?
Paula Anne
New Orleans, LA
Before you buy a car or before you buy auto insurance, try to get more information because insurance rates are definitely affected by the model of the car that you’re driving. Driving a high performance car or driving a sports car means you will to pay more for auto insurance. But this fact is not the general rule in determining insurance rates for your car. As a matter of fact, most auto insurance companies calculate your collision and comprehensive premiums by studying the car’s loss history, whether the model gets stolen very often, and the costs of its repair after an incident. Nowadays, insurers charge higher premiums to sports utility vehicles or SUVs due to recent tests that show that SUVs cause more damage in accidents than other passenger vehicles.
Auto insurance companies often utilize actuarial companies that give ratings of vehicles. Certain factors are used to determine the comprehensive and collision coverage costs in order to minimize the insurance company’s risks. Then, these actuarial companies assign a risk number to a car which is then used by the auto insurance company to calculate their policy rates. However, these risk numbers are not available to the public.
But if you want to know how much it will really cost you, you can contact an auto insurance company before you purchase a vehicle. That way, you can find out first how much you should pay for an auto insurance of a BMW or a Ford pick-up truck.
Just remember, it is better to look around for more information before jumping into conclusions or making decisions about buying a car or getting auto insurance.
Fast Car Insurance Report Online
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.
Cheapest Car Driver Insurance Rates
When people ask me what the easiest way is to get the cheapest car driver insurance for their muscle car, I can answer them with one simple word: your deductible. This is often the thing that people don’t want to deal with, and one of the biggest hassles when it comes to a car insurance claim, but it is simply the best and quickest and easiest way to get the cheapest driver car insurance.
So what do you do with your deductible? Raise it. I would say that the smallest that your deductible should be is around five hundred, but for the best results raise it to at least a thousand. The reason that having a higher deductible gets you the cheapest car driver insurance is because it makes it to where you have to pay the most at one time, after you make a claim for an at fault crash, instead of paying so much over time and possibly never getting into an at fault high performance car insurance accident.
Not sure that raising your deductible is for you? Think about a few factors, such as whether it’s more reasonable for you to pay your insurance over a certain amount of time or to pay a larger amount all at once. If it isn’t in your budget, then you might have to pass. However, you could simply choose the cheaper monthly premium and set aside the money that you might have been paying if your premium were higher for that chance of a deductible. If you do end up needing to pay a deductible, then you have that set aside–if you don’t, then you’ve started a nice little savings.
Cheapest High Performance Car Insurance Quotes
Reader question:
How can I get the cheapest high performance car insurance quote?
Amy
Thanks for asking, Amy.
The biggest factor that plays in to how much you end up paying for your high performance car insurance premium is actually something that has little to do with your driving abilities. It’s your credit score. This is a factor that makes a world where someone with a great driving record, no claims history, and being between the ages of thirty and forty five, get a high car insurance quot simply because of the fact that their credit report is less than savory.
One of the best ways, and also one of the more difficult ways, to insure that your car insurance quot rates remain consistently low is to maintain your credit report so that it looks good to car insurance companies. As the owner of a high performance car, you should make sure that your credit report has enough accounts open that have a good history of making your payments on time. While normally when you buy something and have your credit checked, and when tallying your FICO credit score, the main thing looked for is not only a good account history but a lengthy one, car insurance companies do not care so much about length of your history as the consistency of your payments.
The credit report use when giving out a car insurance quot is still up for debate in many states, where it has become controversial and to some is seen as discrimination against the poor, who tend to have worse accounts on their credit reports.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
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