Do I maintain non-owner auto insurance or just cancel entirely?
The short of it: It’s probably not a lame up-sell, but YMMV depending on which company you’re with now and who you end up with in the future. The long and boring of it: The company that I work for (pervasive, insures in every state, you’re in good hands and all) uses a tool called a “current carrier database”. When we run a new quote for auto insurance, we use that to determine whether you’ve carried insurance continuously or whether you’ve had a lapse in coverage, for whatever reason. Lots of companies use these in every state in the US. If your current company uses one, the results of this search can affect your premium thusly: We have two different “companies” under the brand name; a standard level and an indemnity level. Standard’s premiums are half what indemnity’s are. Standard is for good drivers with good credit who have maintained insurance with Bodily Injury Coverage for at least a year. Indemnity is for dodgy drivers with bad credit and/or who haven’t maintained insurance (a
Car and Home insurance companies often have different rates for those who renew and for new business. New business rates can be better than renewal rates due to the “stickiness” of current customers who are less likely to switch based on price alone. Someone shopping around for rate has less incentive to go with a particular company if the rate isn’t competitive. That being said, insurers price to risk. If you are a poor risk, your rate will be high no matter what. The best you can do is find a company that uses an algorithm for pricing that for some reason misses labelling you as the risk you actually are. So, all things being equal, if you have a safe driving record you should be a good risk no matter what. Prices will likely be better if you shop around. And don’t feel bad about playing one company’s price against another. You’ll most likely get some on the spot discounts for your business – although those rates are for the first year and will probably go up once you renew (see firs
I can tell you that my wife once let her insurance lapse after being dropped from her insurer. She then tried to get new insurance two weeks later. The prices were insane (3x her old rate) due to the fact that she’d been un-insured for a time. We ended up adding her to my policy in order to get a reasonable rate.
