How Statisticians Formulate Online Car Insurance Quotes
Car insurance companies spend a lot of time and money thinking about statistics. Statistics are the foundation of their companies; they pay highly trained actuarial technicians. As these statisticians formulate the chances of a driver being involved in a car insurance claim, the online car insurance quotes provided by an insurer become more and more accurate. Dangerous drivers end up paying more for their car insurance and safe drivers pay less. However, this is a generalized overview of the job that statisticians perform. In order to control your car insurance policy, it’s helpful to know exactly how statisticians formulate car insurance quotes–and what you can do to drive your online quotes down as low as possible.
The main job of actuarial statisticians is to gather information. They do this using a number of methods, including third party companies and government provided demographic information, as well as the records of the insurance company itself. Basically, they’ll look at anything that they can look at to determine a driver’s risk, no matter how seemingly insignificant a certain piece of information might be. They figure out whether men are more likely to cause a car accident than women, what ages are the most dangerous for driving, and much, much more. All of this information goes into an actuarial table. This table is designed in a way so that car insurance agents can use it to quickly figure out a range for a car insurance quote. When you look at online car insurance quotes, you’re plugging information into a form that runs through this actuarial table to determine your approximate risk. There’s a lot of confusing math involved, but the bottom line is that anything that increases your risk goes into the table, from demographic information to your driving history.
There are some exceptions. Your car insurance company cannot use your race or handicap status to figure your online car insurance quotes, and depending on the state that you live in, there may be other special laws that prevent them from using certain pieces of information. This is done to protect consumers, but it makes statisticians jobs a bit more difficult and makes the equation that they develop a bit more complex. To control your car insurance costs, you should try to limit as many of your risk factors as possible. Drive a safe car, don’t get any traffic citations, and use the market to your advantage–compare as many quotes as possible before you settle on a single policy. Knowing the basics of how statisticians formulate quotes can give you tremendous control over your policy.
