Can Your Credit Score Cost You With Your Auto Insurer?
We all have to be concerned regarding gas costs.
“Would you tell me how to get to the Motel 6?”
“Sure. You want to stay on this street for about $6.00 worth, after that turn right at the light, go about $1.25, then keep to your left and you will be there in about $3.15.”
Like employing defensive driving strategies behind the wheel to keep away from collisions, these days, we also need to be concerned about how our finances can have an effect on our auto insurance rates. Consider this: missing a single credit card payment might increase the price of insuring your car, owing to the common use of an insurance rating model which considers policyholders’ credit score histories.
You may assume that your borrowing conduct may appear unrelated to the chance of anything bad happening to your vehicle. The insurance industry, however, believes that a credit history can be employed to help predict the probability of a policyholder eventuallysubmitting a claim and costing the insurer money. As a result, insurers are more and more relying on credit-based insurance scores — calculated utilizing info from policyholders’ credit score reports — when supplying insurance coverage.
These credit-based insurance scores share common factors with standard credit scores used by banking institutions and other lenders, which includes the types of facts they take into account to gauge calculated risk. But they also have some important differences.
Insurance coverage scores are designed to predict insurance losses; credit scores forecast the probability of delinquency or nonpaying of credit obligations. Though some of the same elements or traits are utilized to create a credit-based insurance score, not all of the credit information is employed.
Insurance scores have been in use for more than 20 years, but have experienced a recent surge in popularity. Today, the use of credit-based scores is widespread. FICO, founder of the main financial scoring model that bearsits name, states that roughly 95 percent of all auto insurance coverage policies are awarded today based to some degree, on credit-based insurance coverage scores.
So What Factors Into Insurance coverage Scores?
• Outstanding debt.
• Length of credit score history.
• Late installments.
• Collections and bankruptcies.
• New applicationsfor credit.
These components, along with more standard components like age, gender and claims data, are used to determine insurance rates for drivers.
So for everybody who drives a leased car, on credit-card gas, to a mortgaged home, to enjoy their favorite show on a financed big screen TV; in order to get the lowest car insurance coverage rates possible, remember to keep your payments UP and your accident claim rate DOWN.
Until Next Time,
Eddie
ASenseOfHumorDriving.com
7920 Glenview Drive
Richland Hills, TX 76180
817-577-8854