Measuring a Quote Against What You Already Have

Most shopping advice starts with collecting quotes. It should start one step earlier, with the policy you already own, because that is the thing every quote is trying to beat and the only one whose terms you can read in full today.

Start with the declarations page, not the renewal notice

The renewal notice tells you a price. The declarations page tells you what you are buying. Pull it up before you speak to anyone and write down, in one column:

There is a fuller write-up of Bluefire insurance on the Auto World Insurance Services site.

• Bodily injury liability, per person and per accident
• Property damage liability
• Uninsured and underinsured motorist limits, or a note that they were rejected
• Medical payments limit, if any
• Comprehensive deductible and collision deductible, per vehicle
• Rental reimbursement and roadside, present or absent
• Every vehicle and every listed driver
• The policy term, and the total premium for that term

That column is your baseline. Every quote you collect gets a column beside it with the same rows.

The mistake this prevents

Without a baseline, people compare a new quote against a remembered price — usually the one they paid when they first signed up, sometimes years ago and at different limits. The new quote looks terrible, or wonderful, for reasons that have nothing to do with the carrier. Writing the baseline down converts a feeling into a row of numbers.

Check the drivers and vehicles first, before the price

Declarations pages drift out of date. In our office this is the single most common surprise when we read one back to a caller: a driver who moved out two years ago is still listed, a vehicle that was sold is still rated, a lienholder that has been paid off is still shown, or an address is stale. Any of those makes your current premium the wrong baseline — and fixing them with your existing carrier may change the picture before you shop at all.

Then decide what you want to keep

You do not have to replicate your current policy. You have to decide, consciously, where the new one should differ. Two useful questions:

1. Are the limits still right? They were chosen at a moment that may no longer describe your life — a house since bought, a child now driving, savings that have grown or shrunk.
2. Is the physical damage coverage still right? A car that was new when the policy started may now be worth little enough that the comprehensive and collision question is genuinely open.

Decide that first, then quote everyone at the answer. Otherwise you will find yourself comparing your old choices to a stranger's defaults.

Reading the result honestly

When the columns are filled in, one of three things is true. The new quote is meaningfully better at matched coverage, in which case switch. It is roughly the same, in which case stay — you keep whatever longevity credits are accruing and avoid the paperwork. Or it is better only because it is less policy, in which case it is not better.

We tell callers to stay where they are more often than people expect, and the declarations-page comparison is usually why. Send us the page and we will build the second column for you, including the cases where the honest answer is that your current carrier is already doing well by you.