Posts Tagged ‘Rates’
The mask: Life insurance and sleep apnea — treatment lowers your rates
May 23rd, 2012
The mask: Life insurance and sleep apnea — treatment lowers your rates
In addition to the health implications, sleep apnea is also a factor when it comes to life and health insurance. "A diagnosis of sleep apnea can result in a 'decline to cover' by a life insurance company. If the insurance company does provide coverage, …
Read more on Fox Business
Largest Life & Annuity Insurers' Profits Drop 84 Percent
Hartford Life Insurance Company, a unit of Hartford Financial Services Group (HIG), with a Weiss Financial Strength Rating of C ("Fair"), reported a 50 percent increase in earnings, from $ 122.5 million to $ 184.2 million during the same period.
Read more on MarketWatch (press release)
Amica Life Insurance Company Deploys StoneRiver's LifeSuite® Automated …
OAKLAND, Calif., May 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Amica Life Insurance Company, life subsidiary of Amica Mutual Insurance Company, and StoneRiver Inc., trusted insurance technology partner, announced today that Amica Life is now in production with …
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OAIN: Rates Increasing for Texas High-Risk Car Insurance Program
May 3rd, 2012
OAIN: Rates Increasing for Texas High-Risk Car Insurance Program
/EINPresswire.com/Texas officials announced Wednesday that they will be raising bodily injury and property damage liability rates within the state-run program that covers high-risk motorists, reports Online Auto Insurance News.
Read more on EIN News (press release)
Allstate 1Q Profit Jumps 46% On Home-Insurance Results
Underwriting profit at the company's property-liability unit, which includes its home and auto-insurance segments, rose nearly 60% to $ 523 million as returns from its home insurance operation more than doubled. The result in home insurance was partly …
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FL Car Insurance Experts at St. Johns Insurance Agency Issue Tips on How to …
FL Car Insurance Experts at St. Johns Insurance Agency Issue Tips on How to Combat State's Rising Gas Prices Florida gas prices are becoming simply unaffordable for many families and are only expected to climb higher as summer approaches.
Read more on Insurance News Net (press release)
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Some states give troubled consumers a break on use of credit scoring for insurance rates
April 27th, 2012
Troy Anderson
A spouse’s death, a job loss or a catastrophic illness are among the most traumatic events in life. These kinds of tragedies account for nearly 90 percent of family bankruptcies – usually walloping the credit scores of their unfortunate victims.
Yet some insurance companies, where permitted by state law, use credit information in determining your rates for auto and home insurance.
“This results in pretty significant impacts on certain consumers,” says Birny Birnbaum, executive director of the Center for Economic Justice, a nonprofit advocacy group. “The difference between two consumers who are other similarly situated – one having bad credit and the other having good credit – can be 100 or 200 percent more in terms of premium differences.”
Is the law on your side?
In response to what Birnbaum and others think is an inherently unfair way of calculating insurance risk, a growing number of states have passed laws directing insurance companies to provide reasonable exceptions for a number of these “extraordinary life circumstances.”
So far, 15 states have passed laws based on a model law from the National Conference of Insurance Legislators. Those states are Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia.
These extraordinary life events can include the loss of a primary breadwinner’s income; a serious illness or injury of an immediate family member; a catastrophic illness; the death of a spouse, child or parent; divorce; interruption of alimony and child support; identity theft; or overseas military deployment.
Kathy Donovan, senior compliance counsel at Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, says these laws allow insurance companies to still use credit information to determine rates, but require them to take into account unexpected life events. “This really started taking hold after the financial crisis a few years ago,” Donovan says.
These new provisions come as lawmakers in many states have introduced bills that would impose credit scoring restrictions on insurance companies. For example, a bill in Illinois would require insurers to recalculate a consumer’s insurance score upon request. Meanwhile, a bill in Maryland would prohibit insurance companies from rating risk based on the credit history of an applicant.
About a decade ago, insurance companies first started using credit information to determine a consumer’s level of risk before selling or renewing auto, home or renter’s insurance policies. The insurance companies argue there’s a direct correlation between a consumer’s financial stability and his risk of filing an insurance claim.
Insurers: Credit scoring improves accuracy
Dave Snyder, vice president and associate general counsel at the American Insurance Association, an industry trade group, says the use of credit-based insurance scores has widely been widely embraced by state legislators and insurance regulators, with a few exceptions. Every year, Snyder says, state lawmakers around the country introduce measures regarding credit-based insurance scoring, but the “overwhelming trend” is to continue to permit the practice.
“The majority of policyholders receive discounts as a result of credit-based insurance scoring, and auto insurance and homeowner’s insurance are more available because credit-based insurance scoring has improved the accuracy of underwriting,” Snyder says. “Insurance is more affordable to more people and is generally more available because insurers have an objective measurement of risk that has increased the accuracy of underwriting over the more traditional factors.”
In 2007, a Federal Trade Commission study found that credit-based insurance scores effectively forecast a consumer’s approach to insurance claims. Insurance companies use the scores to predict the number and cost of claims that consumers are likely to file, and determine the premiums they are charged. The study found the use of credit-based insurance scores is likely to make the price of insurance better match consumer risks. Therefore, the thinking goes, higher-risk consumers pay higher premiums and lower-risk consumers pay lower premiums.
Opponents: An ‘unsound’ practice
Robert Hunter, director of insurance at the nonprofit Consumer Federation of America, says use of credit-based insurance scores is “very troubling” – boosting insurance premiums significantly for those with dinged credit records.
“The problem with credit-based insurance scoring is simple: It’s actuarially unsound,” Hunter says. “What is the logic underlying this? If I lose my job during a recession and have trouble paying my bills, why am I suddenly a worse driver? (The insurance industry) can’t answer that question. They say, ‘We don’t know. We just know there is a correlation.’ That is a huge difference from the historical classification system.”
Birnbaum agrees. He says it’s unfair to charge higher premiums for consumers who have been victims of various catastrophic events.
“In our view, fairness means you don’t penalize somebody for a catastrophic event that is completely outside their control,” Birnbaum says. “You don’t penalize someone because they are low-income or a minority. Yet credit-based insurance scoring has a disproportionate impact for all those reasons.”
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Will my auto insurance rates go up if I get a red light camera ticket?
April 8th, 2012
Question by : Will my auto insurance rates go up if I get a red light camera ticket?
This is my first red light camera ticket but my second ticket this year. The first one was a speeding ticket. Will my auto insurance rates go up for a red light ticket?
Best answer:
Answer by Rocky Squirrel
Your insurance rate only goes up depending in which State you live. In States where red light camera tickets are civil penalities, then No. In States where red light camera tickets are treated like normal red light tickets; that is, a criminal misdemeanor, then Yes.
In all cases, all red light camera tickets are illegal no matter where you live. Your department of transportation does not paint the safe braking distance line on the road as required by the equation they use to set the yellow light duration. It’s a huge engineering defect we all overlooked so long as the police enforced the law. The police realize that deciding to stop or go when seeing a light turn yellow is a guess . . . and grant you leniency when you guess wrong by a fraction of a second.
Red light cameras are precision computers and do not allow the guess. The DOT must paint the line so that traversing an intersection upon seeing a yellow is not a guess.
Get tough and sue your city.
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Will a renters insurance and automobile insurance claim effect homeowners insurance rates?
February 29th, 2012
Question by 400hp marauder: Will a renters insurance and automobile insurance claim effect homeowners insurance rates?
Im purchasing a home in 2 months. Meanwhile my apartment was broken into and my second vehicle was stolen via my spare key which was hidden in my apartment. My losses for the apartment are around $ 5,000 and my vehicle carried full coverage and is valued at $ 9,200. If i make an insurance claim to cover my losses, when i buy my home would my homeowners insurance rates suffer from these two big claims?
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Could in-car technology put a dent in distracted driving — and your auto insurance rates?
February 23rd, 2012
Troy Anderson
In a move that eventually could lower auto insurance rates, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is urging automakers to incorporate technologies into new vehicles that would disable communication and navigation systems while someone’s driving.
As part of a growing campaign to crack down on distracted driving, LaHood also may call on automakers to equip cars with technology that disables cellphones, smartphones, electronic tablets and other mobile devices while vehicles are moving.
Taking on texting
“Distracted driving is a dangerous and deadly habit on America’s roadways – that’s why I’ve made it a priority to encourage people to stay focused behind the wheel,” LaHood says. “These guidelines are a major step forward in identifying real solutions to tackle the issue of distracted driving for drivers of all ages.”
The proposed guidelines come amid growing unease about the dangers of distracted driving, which includes talking or texting on cellphones, using GPS, eating food, putting on makeup and attending to children.
Of increasing concern is the practice of texting and surfing the Internet while driving. Drivers must take their eyes off the road and at least one hand off the wheel to text and surf. Furthermore, people can become so absorbed in their conversations and their use of addicting gadgets that their ability to drive is harmed.
In 2010, nearly 3,100 people were killed and about 500,000 injured in crashes involving driver distraction. Studies show drivers who use handheld devices are four times more likely than other drivers to get into a crash serious enough to cause injury.
In response to the dangers of distracted driving, 35 states and the District of Columbia have passed texting-while-driving bans. Nine states and D.C. prohibit motorists from using handheld cellphones while driving.
Tackling a ‘huge problem’
Russ Rader, a spokesman for the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, says the new federal guidelines would encourage a variety of technological approaches to this “huge problem.”
“We’ve had good results in the past working with automakers on voluntary safety programs,” Rader says. “So, it’s a good step the government is taking to work with automakers on the distracted driving problem.”
Gloria Bergquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, says the trade group is reviewing the guidelines so it can offer input during hearings in March being held by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Los Angeles, Chicago and D.C.
Attempting to keep up automakers unveiling newer ways for drivers to stay connected behind the wheel, a cottage industry of companies has sprung up, offering technologies that prevent drivers from texting, emailing or surfing the web. The technologies work by placing restrictions on the mobile devices based on GPS signals, vehicle data or nearby cellphone towers. Incoming calls are routed to voicemail, or automated messages are sent to explain that a driver is busy.
“Digital technology has created a connected culture in America that has forever changed our society,” Bergquist says. “Consumers expect to have access to new technology, so integrating and adapting this technology to enable safe driving is the solution.”
Jeanne Salvatore, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Insurance Information Institute, says the proposed guidelines could reduce auto insurance rates in the future.
“It remains to be seen,” Salvatore says. “If accident rates go down, then that will be calculated into the rates going forward.”
Convenience vs. caution
The first set of proposed federal guidelines includes recommendations automakers can use to ensure communication, entertainment and navigational devices installed in vehicles are less likely to distract drivers.
The federal government is considering a second set of guidelines that would encourage automakers to install equipment that would disable portable electronic devices such as navigation systems, smartphones, electronic tablets and other mobile devices. A third set of guidelines would be aimed at reducing distractions caused by voice-activated equipment.
“We recognize that vehicle manufacturers want to build vehicles that include the tools and convenience expected by today’s American drivers,” says David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“The guidelines we’re proposing would offer real-world guidance to automakers to help them develop electronic devices that provide features consumers want – without disrupting a driver’s attention or sacrificing safety.”
‘No silver bullet’
Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, says the proposed guidelines are a promising step in the fight against distracted driving.
“Like most highway safety problems, there is no silver bullet,” Harsha says. “You have to do a lot of different things. It’s important to pass laws banning the use of cellphones while driving and enforce them. It’s important to have education programs and employer policies. It’s also important to have restrictions on the use of new technologies to limit driving distractions.”
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Compare Life Insurance Rates With Policies That Pay You Monthly …
February 18th, 2012
Compare Life Insurance Rates With Policies That Pay You Monthly …
BestLifeInsuranceCompanyForMe.org plans to expose and compare life insurance rates for policies used exclusively for the ultra rich as investment vehicles. The consumer help site has been collaborating with experienced life insurance brokers who have …
Read more on PR Web (press release)
Life insurance cover must be 12 times of yearly income
You require a life insurance only if you have any dependants. You should do a proper need based analysis for insurance requirements. You can seek unbiased professional help for doing this. You can also use the calculator on the apnapaisa site …
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Report: Ayla Reynolds' father took out life insurance on toddler before she …
(CBS) – The mother of missing Maine toddler Ayla Reynolds says the girl's father took out a life insurance policy on Ayla in the weeks before she disappeared. "In the same week Justin took Ayla from me, he took out a life insurance policy on Ayla," …
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Will raising the speed limit raise the rates for your auto insurance?
February 13th, 2012
Melody Warnick
Drivers feeling the need for speed may want to plan a road trip through Texas.
A state law passed in May 2011 and being carried out by the Texas Department of Transportation raises the speed limit to 75 miles per hour on close to 1,500 miles of roadway, spanning 60 counties across the state. Add that to 3,600 miles already posted at 75 mph or higher, and that gives Texas some of the fastest roads in the country.
What can drivers expect from the changes, aside from a little more wind in their hair?
“The trade-off is clear,” says Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Raising speed limits gets people to their destinations faster, but the downside is more severe crashes and more deaths on those roads.”
Higher speed limits: Death trap?
A long history of raising and lowering speed limits in the United States has given researchers fertile ground to study the effects. And, Rader says, “study after study shows that when speed limits go up, deaths go up, and when speed limits go down, deaths go down.”
According to a 2009 study by the University of Illinois at Chicago, when the national speed limit dropped to 55 miles per hour in 1974 (a response to the oil embargo), traffic deaths dropped by 17 percent. In the 10 years after the national maximum speed limit was repealed in 1995, about 12,500 people died in crashes that researchers blame directly on higher speed limits.
But Kelli Petras, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation, says raising the speed limit in Texas actually might make motorists safer. The problem, she says, isn’t higher speed limits themselves — it’s the gap between the slowest and fastest drivers on the road.
“If you can get 85 percent of the cars on the roadway to drive the same speed, that limits or reduces the number of accidents we see,” Petras says. On the other hand, if drivers are regularly going too fast or too slow for the posted speed limit, “you have a larger number of accidents, because you’ll have a greater speed differential,” she says.
By raising the limit to more closely match the speed most drivers already are going, she says, you narrow the difference between the tortoises and the hares, leading to fewer accidents. That’s what the Texas Department of Transportation found in 2005 when it raised some interstate highway speed limits to 80 mph.
“Everyone was extremely nervous about what the results would be,” Petras says. “It turned out that we saw a reduction in traffic accidents, because most motorists were already traveling at that speed.”
Faster cars, higher rates?
Just as it’s not entirely clear whether the higher speed limits will lead to safer or scarier driving, it also remains to be seen how they’ll affect auto insurance rates for Texas drivers.
“Insurers don’t look at the laws of the land to set rates, they just look at what claims are coming in,” says Mark Hanna, a spokesman for the Insurance Council of Texas, a trade group for insurance companies in Texas.
If critics are right, and higher speed limits lead to more frequent — and more severe — car accidents, the domino effect may indeed lead to a rate bump.
“When you have more property damage and more extensive injuries (from auto accidents), that results in higher repair costs and medical costs. That leads to costlier claims, which eventually leads to raising the premiums to pay for the claims,” Hanna says.
That won’t happen instantly, and it won’t happen universally. With 500 insurers doing business in Texas, it’ll be up to each insurer to analyze the data and set its own rates. But for now, drivers in Texas — and anywhere else — can do these three things to stay safe, smart and well-insured on the road.
1. Travel the speed limit. Safety experts worry that even if the sign now says 75 mph, drivers always will creep a little past the limit, to 80 or 85. But getting a speeding ticket “will get the attention of your insurance company, who’s looking at the risk associated with insuring a particular driver,” Hanna says. To keep your rates low — and to stay safer on the road — don’t blow past the posted limit.
2. Invest in a safe car. With side curtain air bags and other safety systems, cars are safer than ever. (Check out the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s website for vehicle safety ratings.) But, Rader warns, “when crashes happen at very high speeds, all the safety systems you have built into your vehicle can be overwhelmed. Crash tests on vehicles are conducted at 35 to 40 miles per hour, not 75 or 80.”
3. Be responsive. The smartest drivers know that you can’t always go the maximum speed limit. “There could be ice, rain, wind, blowing dust. We have all kinds of weather conditions in Texas that don’t really call for a driver to be driving the maximum speed,” Hanna says. Responding to road conditions and keeping pace with other drivers around you is the smartest way to stay safe on the road.
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Consumer group: Car-insurance rates unfair to poor
February 8th, 2012
Consumer group: Car-insurance rates unfair to poor
Cars Newsday > Classifieds > Cars Consumer group: Car-insurance rates unfair to poor Published: February 6, 2012 11:30 AM By PATRICIA SABATINI Scripps Howard News The Consumer Federation of America is charging that the nation's poorest drivers are …
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OAI: Oklahoma Bill Could Help Enforce Auto Insurance Law
By Online Auto Insurance, LLC OKLAHOMA CITY, Feb. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Oklahoma lawmakers are hoping to help quell the state's uninsured motorist problem with a bill that would allow police to pull over drivers simply because information in a …
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1 Trick to Crash Your New York Auto Insurance Rates
Consumer experts at InsureonaBudget.com show New York auto insurance policy holders how they can reduce their auto insurance premium by 55% just from taking advantage of loopholes in car insurers' rates. Most consumers understand that they aren't going …
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ZIP code change can zap your home insurance rates
February 7th, 2012
Linda Melone
Before you decide to buy your dream home in another ZIP code, you may want to check with your home insurance agent. Moving from one ZIP code to another can raise your insurance rates, even if the new home sits only a few blocks away from your current one.
One reason: The way insurance companies calculate homeowners premiums has changed in recent years, says Rick Mikolasek, an independent insurance agent in Dallas.
In the past, premiums were calculated based on all perils — such as a fire or hailstorm — in a particular ZIP code. “You would simply pay more if there were more claims in your ZIP code — or your state, for that matter — no matter the cause of the claim,” he says.
Now, insurers employ more precise methods for figuring how much you should pay for home insurance, Mikolasek says. “This has led to the trend of rating by ZIP code for each particular type of loss, the same way auto insurance premiums have been calculated for years,” he says.
For instance, in a ZIP code with a high number of theft claims, your home insurance premium easily could creep up by 3 percent to 5 percent compared with a lower-crime-rate ZIP code nearby, according to Mikolasek.
Zipping up hikes in your premium
In some cases, you can offset higher rates triggered by relocation to another ZIP code by making small changes to your coverage, says Ryan Hardgrave, an agent with Insurance One Agency LLC in San Antonio.
Let’s say you’re moving to a ZIP code with a history of hailstorms and windstorms — a move that could cost you an extra $ 500 to $ 600 a year. If you raise your hail and wind deductible to at least 1 percent of your annual premium, Hardgrave says, you can slice $ 250 to $ 500 from your annual premium. Most homeowners carry hail and wind deductibles of $ 500 to $ 1,000 — amounts that typically are less than 1 percent of your annual premium, he says.
If you don’t want to adjust your deductible, be sure to ask your insurance agent whether you’re qualifying for every discount that you can get, Hardgrave says. The most overlooked discounts include credits for living in a gated community (5 percent to 20 percent), installing a monitored burglar or fire alarm system (5 percent to 15 percent) and being a “mature” (over 55) homeowner (about 10 percent), he says.
Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute, recommends asking these questions to see whether a ZIP code change could affect your home insurance rate:
• How far is the home from a fire station? A house within about five miles of a fire station that’s staffed by professional firefighters can cost 35 percent to 50 percent less to insure than a home that’s not near that kind of fire station, Mikolasek says.
• Is the home in a flood-prone area? Flooding is not covered by standard home insurance policies. Flood insurance is available from the National Flood Insurance Program and a few specialty insurers. The average cost of flood insurance: $ 400 to $ 500 a year.
• What is the earthquake risk? Coverage for earthquakes requires an endorsement (an addition to your basic policy) or a separate policy. The cost of earthquake insurance varies widely, depending in part on how likely it is that a quake will rattle your area, according to Worters.
Mikolasek suggests researching insurance costs for a new home just as you would investigate the schools and property tax rates in a new locale. “The best way to ensure you are not surprised when purchasing your policy is to obtain premium quotes from multiple insurance companies for each property in each ZIP code you are considering,” he says.
