Playing the Field: Finding an Insurance Quote Online
Put simply, finding an insurance quote online is one of the best ways to make certain you’re getting the best coverage at the best rates, though the advantages of soliciting an online insurance quote don’t stop there. From making the most of your valuable time, to protecting yourself against insurance fraud, companies that provide you with an insurance quote online are a valuable resource for anyone looking to fill an insurance need, especially if you know how to make the process work for you. Here is a quick guide to the business of online insurance, as well as a short primer for how to get the best insurance quote online that you possibly can.
Understanding the Process of Getting an Insurance Quote Online
Without beating around the bush, the primary reason for searching for insurance online is convenience. It’s the closest you’ll get to one-stop-shopping in an industry where making things easy for the consumer is the exception, not the rule. Here are a few of the many reasons customers are choosing to solicit their quotes online from quote providers, rather than doing it the old-fashioned way.
- Online Saves Time —The number one reason consumers opt to search for an online insurance quote is to save time. Not only is logging onto the internet from your study a lot more convenient than driving down to your local insurance provider, but by choosing to solicit quotes online from a quote provider rather than a single insurance company, it’s the rough equivalent of hitting every insurance provider in town with the single click of a button. Case in point: you can expect to get between 5 and 15 local and national quotes each time you submit your information with a quote provider like NetQuote.com.
- Less Paperwork —Regardless of whether you shop for an insurance quote online or not, in order to provide you with the proper coverages at optimum rates, insurance providers require you to fill out a host of paperwork before they make you an offer. An informal survey of individual insurance providers determined that over the course of soliciting a quote, consumers should expect to fill out anywhere from seven to 15 pages of paperwork, containing in the neighborhood of 10 questions per page. Do the math and that means that on average you’re answering as many as 135 questions per application, and even more if your insurance needs are more complicated. If you’re using an online quote service like NetQuote.com, however, you only have to go through that process once in order to get a host of reliable quotes from vetted insurance providers.
- Security —According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), insurance fraud accounts for $40 billion in losses annually in the U.S.A., raising the average American’s insurance premiums by $400 to $700 per year. Not all of those losses are due to insurance companies taking advantage of consumers, but fraud perpetrated against consumers is a hefty slice of the insurance fraud pie. That said, soliciting more than one online insurance quote through an insurance quote provider is one of the best ways to prevent yourself from being a victim. Comparing multiple quotes allows you to weed out quotes that are suspiciously low or deceitfully high (two strategies often used by predatory insurance providers looking to take advantage of consumers), and since any insurance quote finding service on the internet worth their salt vets associate insurance providers before linking them up to you, it’s easy to see why the terms “online” and “security” can actually add up to a good thing where insurance is concerned.
How to Get the Best Online Insurance Quote: A Primer
By now you should be open to the idea that using an online provider to solicit insurance quotes has a huge upside. That does not mean that it’s a failsafe process, however. It’s still your responsibility to know what kinds of insurance you need and at what amounts, and to answer the questions posed to you honestly and thoroughly when acquiring quotes online. Failing to do so, combined with the efforts of quote companies to streamline the process of filling out paperwork, can end up in inaccurate quotes and missed discounts. Remember, internet insurance quote providers aren’t consumer advocates, even though they do have your best interests at heart. It’s still your responsibility to make sure you’re getting the best insurance coverages at the best rates, though soliciting an insurance quote online from an online insurance quote provider is, without a doubt, one of the smartest ways to make that happen.
