When you get a new car, you didn’t get only a new car, you got new expenses along with it, among these expenses is auto insurance premium, or put simple, cost of car insurance. How much you end up paying as auto insurance premium is not fixed, many factors go into how much you pay for auto insurance, while some of these factors are controllable, others are completely out of your control
Some of these rate-determining factors include,
· Age and gender: Men are more likely to be involved in an accident than women and the older ones are less likely to be involved in an accident than the younger ones.
· Profession: Pilots seldom drive their cars for far distances, unlike their chauffer and delivery counterparts who are always on the road.
· Marital status: The married are less susceptible to accidents than the unmarried.
· Residence: Those in more populated places are more susceptible to accidents than their less populated counterparts.
· Age of car: older cars are less safe on the road and thus more likely to be involved in an accident.
· Vehicle size: Bigger vehicles are safer than smaller cars in an accident.
· Driving history: Drivers with less history of accidents tend to pay less than their counterpart who have history with accidents; this is since they are less likely to be involved in an accident any time soon.
· Likelihood of theft: classy and very expensive cars attract higher rates since the possibility of auto theft is higher with them.
Other factors include the safety rating of your car, your driving activity and credit score. Using the above metrics, the more your susceptibility to accidents, the more your rate. Knowing these factors which determines how much you pay and knowing which you can manipulate or control to reduce the amount you spend on insurance is important.
All things being equal, normal thinking dictates that women pay less for car insurance than men since they’re inherently safer drivers. But research by the Consumer Federation of America, showed that women of same driving records as their male counterparts pay more insurance than the men.
In the words of CFA director of insurance, Robert Hunter, “ it is widely believed that male drivers, especially young male drivers, cause more and costlier accidents”, he went further to state the following “If sex were an actual risk factor, we wouldn’t see companies using it in such divergent ways, the insurance companies use of sex as a rating factor does not seem to reveal much in the way of a consistent risk assessment, and regulators should reconsider allowing companies to continue using it at all”.
Auto insurance companies therefore have to give proper information on why their female customers are charged more than the males which contrasts every conventional thinking.