Massachusetts insurance professionals take note.
A new study that has been featured in the media from the Boston Globe, to the Wall Street Journal to NBC, crowns Massachusetts as the state with highest premium increase for drivers after just one accident.
This is the second year in a row that Massachusetts has taken the top spot in the study conducted by insurancequotes.com and Quadrant Information Services. According to the report, the following profile was used in the methodology to calculate the increase in premiums:
Averages are based on a 45-year-old married female driver driving 2012 sedan, employed, with a B.A., excellent credit score and no lapse in coverage, who has never filed a claim and has the following limits: $100,000 (bodily injury) / $300,000 (property damage) / $100,000 (UI/UIM), $10,000 (PIP) and a $500 deductible. Data based on making one auto insurance claim within a 12-month period.
The study then went on to analyze how much this drivers premium would increase after filing one of three different types of claims: Bodily Injury, Property Damage and Comprehensive.
What happened in Massachusetts…..
A driver who makes a single auto insurance claim of $2000 or more would see an average premium increase of 41 percent. This was a three percent increase over the average premium increase last year.
In Massachusetts, however, the filing of a single auto claim of $2000 or more results in an average premium increase of 76 percent. This is up from 67 percent which was calculated in last year’s study, when Massachusetts also ranked first.
According to information provided to insurancequotes.com for the study, the NAIC says that Massachusetts drivers paid on average an annual premium of $976.65 in 2013. As a result, insurancequotes.com calculates that a single auto insurance claim in the Commonwealth would result in a driver paying an additional $745 per year for auto insurance.
On the other end of the spectrum is Maryland which has the lowest increase in premium after a single accident. In comparison, a driver who files a single auto insurance claim in Maryland of $2000 or more only sees a 22 percent spike in annual premiums. This represents a two percent increase over last year’s numbers. Based on NAIC figures, that averages out to an annual increase of about $213.
A look at the top five states ….
State | NAIC Average Premium | Average Increase for making 1 claim | Average Increase for making 1 claim |
Massachusetts | $976.65 | 76.27% | $1721.55 |
California | $749.79 | 75.37% | $1314.94 |
New Jersey | $1219.93 | 62.35% | $1980.52 |
North Carolina | $611.48 | 51.65% | $927.32 |
Minnesota | $718.61 | 47.89% | $1,062.78 |
Why you might want to know this…
Insurance agents should be ready to field questions about this or to warn their insureds about premium increases after an at-fault accident. While many insurance agents think that their clients know this, you might be surprised to realize how many people don’t. By making them aware of this, particularly new or teenage drivers, having this in the back of their mind will certainly affect they way they act on the road.
Read the entire article and see of a list of all 50 states on the insurancequotes.com website