Automotive Guruz

Prepare yourself for the things that insurance providers ask

For an insurance company, you are both a risk and a potential source of revenue. You are a risk when you drive around while drunk, are a teenager who drives around with other teenaged friends, are driving a “risky” type of vehicle, or belong to a certain economic background. These are just a few and they actually have a very long list of statistics and voluminous numbers to help them quantify or measure this risk.

That’s the reason why they will ask you so many questions before they’ll give you the auto insurance quotes that you need. That’s not to say that this article’s purpose is to provide you a way to somehow get lower insurance premiums but rather to make you understand how insurance providers think. If you know how they think, then you’ll know how they’ll act.

Where Do You Live?

While it may be very easy to fake your identity on the Internet and maybe get an email account that does not display your real name, there are other things that they could use to help determine how much premium you’re going to pay. Almost all insurance providers who have an online presence ask this question first before they even ask you your name: your zip code. Others even get very specific and ask you not just your zip code, but the zip code where your car is parked at night.

Why? Because the moment you provide your zip code, huge computer servers in the background start pulling out data about the following:
• Vehicular accidents that happened in that zip code
• Vehicular thefts in the location
• The list of insurance companies that are licensed to operate in that location
• Traffic density
• Accident fatalities and many more

These days, even where you live could be held against you.

Who Are You?

Right after you provide your zip code, the plethora of seemingly innocuous questions that are then hurled in your way all boil down to the desire of the insurance provider to get to know you.

• Who exactly are you?
• What’s your job?
• How much are you making?
• Do you already have car insurance? How long?
• How much are you paying for it?
• Who’s your insurance provider?

To be sure, there are more questions than these and you’ll get to joyfully fill them up later as you sign up for the policy.

Don’t assume that they’re just being friendly and getting to know you. What they’re actually doing is building up your “risk profile”. What’s a risk profile? That’s how likely you are to figure in an accident and then try to collect on your insurance!

Insurance companies are businesses after all, and the more risky policy holders they have, the more likely they’ll lose money.

It’s nothing personal, so don’t worry.

There are quite possibly hundreds of questions that could be asked about you when you try and get auto insurance quotes. There’s actually no way you could cheat them or even lie to them since they have personnel who can verify your identity and whether everything that you’ve said is accurate or not. The best way to approach this is to provide truthful information about you. It would also make the insurance provider feel that you are trustworthy.

Different insurance providers have different risk thresholds and some may be willing to offer lower rates to high risk policies if you just know where to find them. Go ahead and feel free to compare and see how you’ll fare.