Today's consumers enjoy a major buying advantage over shoppers of years past. Whether you're shopping for home insurance, auto insurance, health insurance, life insurance, or other policies - competition is fierce for your business, and more and more companies are competing for your business online. This is typically very good for the consumer and, generally, good for the insurance companies. For the consumer, it fosters more competition and, therefore, lower rates. For the insurance companies, it should lead to a lower cost of customer acquisition; at least that's the theory for those companies who have positioned their companies to compete toe-to-toe in the Internet insurance shopping environment.
The bottom line: Even though many policies, particularly for health insurance and life insurance, often involve a face-to-face meetings between agent and customer - more and more consumers are saving a significant amount of time and money by comparison shopping for the best rates online. Even in those cases where customer-agent meetings take place,more and more consumers are doing online due diligence to the find the company, policy, and rate that offer the best insurance rates or overall value for the insurance coverage.
"...insurance companies are taking a close look at your credit history before approving policies, coverage, and even the rates that you pay!"
Insurance and Your Credit
Many consumers may not be aware of it, but in more and more states, insurance companies are taking a close look at your credit history before approving policies, coverage, and even the rates that you pay! These insurance companies are using the information in your credit reports to develop unique scoring systems. These credit history-based scoring systems help many insurance companies determine whether you are high risk, low risk, or average risk. Not surprisingly, this can directly impact whether your policy is approved - and what rates you pay!
Does Poor Credit Make a Bad Driver…or a Careless Homeowner?
You may ask, what does my credit history have to do with my insurance risk-level. If there is one industry that must use every available resource to manage risk, it is the insurance industry, and the insurance industry has determined, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that higher credit scores, typically, translate into lower insurance risks. The result: your credit history and credit score can save you a lot of money when it comes to home insurance, auto insurance, and health insurance could even soon become part of the picture as well!
Considering the above, it's not surprising that more and more consumers are monitoring credit on a regular and on-going basis, not only to have the opportunity of qualifying for lower interest rate financing for everything from homes, to cars, to credit cards and more - but to save money and get the best value in their insurance policies.
