Why you need an insurance adviser for your car insurance

Thursday, January 21st, 2016

Car insurance. If you have a car, you have car insurance. But, how many of us really know what our car insurance covers? I remember buying my first car, calling up the insurance company and saying I need full coverage and the cheapest price. Of course, I now have a car payment and an insurance payment, so I want the lowest price, right? How little I knew about what I was actually buying. 

Now that I'm in the insurance industry I've seen first hand how having the right coverage is a blessing and having the wrong coverage is a nightmare.

My job as an insurance adviser is to make sure my clients fall into the first category above. I talk to my clients and get to know their needs. I explain coverage options to them. I won't sell them cheap coverage that doesn't actually cover their needs. 

Here is one quick example of meeting a clients needs.

I had a potential client call me to get a lower premium. She was a single mom with 3 kids who rented a town home. She had the state minimum limits of liability with $1000 deductibles for comp and collision and two teenagers driving her one vehicle. She had no towing, no rental car reimbursement and no renters policy. She expressed that she couldn't afford to pay $1,000 for a claim, but needed a lower payment per month.

I quoted her liability limits of 100/300/100 with 100 comp. deductible, 500 collision deductible, I added towing, rental car, and a renters policy for her town home. The primary reason for the renters policy was that the discount on the auto for having both policies was higher than the premium of the renters policy.

I discussed the quote with the client. I explained that while my entire package was $5 more per month -she would have the right coverage that would actually protect her income, should a claim happen either on her auto or home. She declined to make the switch because she didn't want to pay more monthly.

Three months later she called me back. She had hit a deer. She had to pay to have her vehicle towed. She couldn't afford a rental car, so she'd depended on friends/family to drive her to work/the store, etc. She'd had to borrow $1,000 from family and now has to pay them back $100 per month for 10 months. She said she now understood what I had explained to her. If she had gone with me to begin with, she would have paid $5 more per month, but only had the $100 deductible to pay in her deer claim. 

Needless to say, she decided to make the change. Unfortunately she didn't make it in the first place. 

If you have any questions about the above story or car insurance in general, let me know. Next time I will tell a story that explains more about liability limits.

You can reach me at marie@brocknorton.com MW

Copyright 2016