Online Auto Insurance Quotes Up 21 Percent from 2008

Posted & filed under Car Insurance, Insurance Briefs, Technology.

Earlier today, comScore, Inc., one of the leaders in collecting statistics about the digital universe, released its 2010 U.S. Online Auto Insurance Report,” which tabulates behavioral date from a million-person panel and a survey of over 2,000 American internet users. The point of the survey was to understand why and how people shop for and purchase car insurance over the web.

According to the report, American consumers made 38.8 million requests for online insurance quotes in 2009, which led to the online during the year. Each number represents an increase ove more than 20% over the previous year, likely due to the need to save as much money as possible during the recession.

Susan Engleson, comScore director, told the press, “comScore’s fourth annual U.S. online auto insurance report highlights a year of robust consumer activity in terms of submitting quotes and ultimately purchasing auto insurance online. With the U.S. economy mired in a deep recession throughout much of 2009, consumers looked for opportunities to cut costs and shopping around for auto insurance offered one way of doing that.”

By the numbers, requests for online auto insurance quotes increased 21 percent from 2008 to 2009, and the number of policies actually purchased online increased 22 percent, which is being interpreted as representative of the public’s tendency to shop around for better prices. These strong growth rates follow a fairly weak 2008, which, in turn, was a result of several economic factors including higher gas prices, the tumbling of the stock market, and less advertising from auto insurance companies.