My Personal Finance Blog

Looking around the US, all but three states mandate drivers to carry liability insurance. Some states have no-fault schemes. Others add in a requirement to buy a personal injury protection policy. As the healthcare reform bill was signed into law, many asked whether all insurance mandates were unconstitutional. This is a fun debating topic which sounds possible but will get nowhere. States have always had the right to impose conditions on people’s voluntary activities. If you want to drive, you have to carry liability insurance to pay compensation to anyone else you may injure. A more interesting question is the amount of the minimum requirements imposed by your state’s lawmakers.

Most of these minimums have not been changed for thirty and more years. For example, in 1972, Maryland set $20,000 for a person injured subject to a maximum of $40,000 for losses arising out of a single traffic accident. This was intended to cover medical treatment, loss of earnings while recovering, and so on. In 1972, the average annual salary was $12,000 and most hospitals charged no more than a few hundred dollars for treatment. Most new vehicles cost less than $4,000 to put on the road. You could easily buy a new home for less than $30,000. Looking back now, you wonder how we managed on so little money. Prices have risen fast for medical treatment. Injure the wrong person and the claim against you for loss of earnings is going to be frightening. Why should this matter?The liability coverage only pays out the minimum. You get to pick up the bill for all the other losses. So any savings or property you have may be taken to satisfy a judgment against you.

Should states increase their minimums? Many are thinking about doing so, but the politics of actually making new laws is difficult. During the recession, people are under financial pressure. Forcing them to spend more on vehicle insurance is not going to be popular among the poorer sections of the electorate. For the middle classes, there is the option to buy more coverage including an uninsured and underinsured policy. This is the American way. Those who have money can use it to protect themselves against losses. Those who are poor must take life as it comes.

In Maryland, the legislators have just increased the minimums to $30,000/60,000. This is curiously unreal. An increase to match the rate of inflation since 1972 should make the minimums $100,000/200,000. But, the political situation does not permit the lawmakers to restore the value of the minimums overnight. The answer was annual increases to inflation-proof the amounts. We would have arrived at $100,000 without anyone being too upset about it. But we have grown used to accepting the cheapest solutions even though millions of people across America actually lose money because of it. Why millions of people? These are all the victims of bad driving who never recover anything more than the minimums and suffer major financial losses as a result. This is injustice on a massive scale. And it will never be cured because it would cost too much to make the necessary increases. The only people who come out of this smiling are the investors in the auto insurance industry. Their profits and dividends have been rising steadily despite the recession. To protect yourself, always get auto insurance quotes from this site to find the most affordable coverage. Insurance may be mandated but you don’t have to pay excessive premiums.

It’s easy to say what the law is – legislatures must write it down and publish it for all to read – but harder to live with its consequences. Looking across the US, all but three states have laws setting mandatory insurance levels for all vehicles on the road. Almost without exception, all these states also have laws making it a crime to drive a vehicle on a public road without a valid policy in force. This gives all drivers a simple choice. Either carry the minimum insurance or risk fines and, in some states, the confiscation of the vehicle. All these laws are a compromise between the interests of drivers and the interests of people who may be injured in traffic accidents. The more Libertarian view is personal responsibility. If you do something, you should be prepared for the consequences. That would mean every driver having enough cash in the bank to pay out every time their driving injures someone else or damages their property. But not everyone can afford to pay the medical costs for treating those they injure. This would be seriously unfair. Suppose you were walking along the sidewalk and a car knocks you down. Surely you should not have to pay your own medical costs? The answer is mandatory insurance so there is always some money to pay out to the innocent victims.

Most people agree this is a good idea but there’s a problem. Almost all these states set the mandatory amount forty or fifty years ago. What was an adequate amount then is a drop in the ocean today. So this February, Wisconsin bit the bullet and increased the mandatory rates both for liability insurance and for insurance against uninsured or underinsured drivers. The governor signed the bill into law and everyone sat back and awaited the results. The mail boxes have recently experienced a flood of renewal notices showing significantly higher premiums for the mandatory minimum cover. Needless to say, the Republicans are now promoting a bill to repeal the law making liability insurance mandatory. As it stands, about 14% of all drivers are uninsured. These premium increases during a recession are likely to increase this percentage significantly.

This review of the minimum amounts after forty years was perfectly reasonable. Most other states will have to follow Wisconsin’s example sooner or later. It’s just not acceptable to have such low minimums when medical and repair costs have risen so sharply. But the timing is unfortunate. Insurers had invested their funds in the stock and bond markets. When the recession hit, they lost a hefty slice of their capital reserves. There’s another law requiring insurers to have enough capital in hand to pay out all the expected claims. To build their capital back up to the required levels, all insurers are therefore raising their premium rates. Each state’s insurance department is insisting on putting more money into the reserves. This means you must shop around. Get auto insurance quotes from as many companies as possible to find the best prices. Not all companies lost heavily. Equally, the smaller companies will have to raise the cash from smaller groups of policy holders, i.e. more from each individual. So get the maximum possible number of auto insurance quotes to survey the market before buying.

Life is never fair. Just when you think you have hit rock bottom and things cannot get any worse, they get worse. You would have thought that a recession would mean premium rates would stay the same. In your dreams, you might have hoped for the rates to fall. After all, there’s massive unemployment – it’s the worst level of unemployment for more than sixty years. With household incomes falling and no job security, this is not the time to find premium rates increasing. Yet when those premium notices drop into your mail boxes, the evidence is there. And it’s not just you. Premiums are going up for most drivers. This is so unfair! All but three states in the union have mandatory liability insurance. For everyone who wants to stay legal on the roads, the price of driving is getting to deterrent levels. First it was the price of gas shooting up like a rocket. Now it’s those premiums! What’s going on?

There are two quite different problems coming together at the same time. One comes from the general downturn in the economy. The other is connected with the system of regulation for the insurance industry. On paper, the companies have an easy ride. They collect in the premiums, receive the claims, pay out on the claims and keep the balance as profit. Except the worst recession in decades caught them off guard. It all comes down to what insurers should do with the money they have collected in. Their answer was to invest most of it in the stock market. That way, they earned dividends and got capital growth until it was needed to pay out on the claims. But some invested in these new securitized bonds based on mortgages and other loans. So, when both the property and the capital markets were hit, insurers found themselves with big losses. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been a problem, but the insurance industry has to play by different rules. They are regulated by the insurance departments and commissioners for each state. To protect all you people who buy policies, the key rule is that the companies must have enough capital in reserve to pay out on the claims you make. When the stock and bond markets collapsed, many companies either broke the rule or were too close for comfort. So companies have been moving cash around between states to keep themselves legal and putting up the premiums to collect more.

It’s ironic that a rule designed to protect consumers should be pushing up the premiums so fast. Who would have thought the auto insurance industry would lose so much of the money they had invested. After all, they employ all these clever people called actuaries to measure the risks for writing policies. You would think they would have seen the risks of some of the investments they were making. Yet, like most of the other investment managers, the insurers were taken by surprise. The result is that, overnight, many were close to not having enough money to pay out on your policies. That was and remains a serious problem. That’s why the auto insurance industry is asking you all for more money.

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Vehicle accidents can leave devastating effects in its wake, not least financially. NC auto insurance is similar to that of other states. Policies are very simple and law only requires that drivers carry an adequate amount of liability auto insurance.

Liability insurance pays for property damage and bodily injury caused by the driver of the insured vehicle. The minimum required amount of cover is $30,000 for medical expenses incurred by the driver and $60,000 for combined medical expenses of all the occupants in the vehicle. A minimum of $25,000 is required for property damage resulting from an accident caused by the insured driver. Experts recommend a minimum of $100, 000 in individual medical coverage $300,000 in combined medical expenses and $100,000 in property coverage.

Insurance companies are obliged by law to notify the state of lapsed policies. If the problem is not corrected in the period allowed, the policyholder will have to pay fines.

These minimum amounts will not cover all of the expenses that are part of a major accident. Experts recommend all drivers carry 100/300/100 in coverage. Also mandated by the state is that all drivers must carry continuous liability coverage. Every auto insurance company is required to notify the state when a customer fails to renew their policy. When the state knows of the laps of insurance coverage, the policyholder will have a certain number of days to fix the problem or else will have to pay fees.

North Carolina law recommends collision and comprehensive coverage that will pay for damages resulting from a collision caused by the policyholder. If you do not have this coverage, you will be solely responsible for the necessary repairs. In the event of the vehicle being written off, the policyholder will be responsible for the repayment of any lien even if they no longer have the vehicle. Therefore, it is required that any vehicle, which is under lien, also has comprehensive insurance cover.

Uninsured motorist insurance is strongly recommended in North Carolina to help cover damages resulting from an accident involvement with an uninsured driver or a driver with insufficient insurance. If you do not have uninsured motorist insurance, you will be left responsible for paying the medical as well as repair expenses yourself. This could result in costly lawsuits in order to seek compensation from the uninsured motorists personal assets. Uninsured motorists insurance cover is also helpful in the event of a hit and run accident.

Bodily injury liability is mandatory and can be divided into two different parts. It is important to note that this policy does not provide medical cover for the policyholder and other members on the policy. They will require additional cover.

Property damage liability covers the other driver whose car is damaged in a collision where the policyholder is at fault. Property damage can include other vehicles, buildings, fences and lampposts. As with bodily injury liability, this does not apply towards any expenses incurred by the policyholder. The policyholder will have to buy additional cover for their own vehicle.

Many factors can contribute to saving money on your insurance premium. Many aspects play a part in making up your payment. The type of car you drive is one of the most important aspects. A flashy new sports car will be more expensive to insure than a slower, heavier and older car.

The NCDI or North Carolina Department of Insurance can provide you with any specific information you require with regard to your personal insurance needs. NC auto insurance is helpful in dealing with all kinds of damages and losses that arise because of theft, accidents or malicious damage to your car.