Providers of Idaho auto insurance would feed policy information into the database, and all of that information would get matched up with data on every vehicle registered in the state.

If the database shows registration data for a vehicle but no matching insurance policy, the vehicle owner is liable to get a citation when pulled over by police, who would have 24-7 access to information contained in the database.

Information in the database would also be accessible to the Department of Transportation, the Department of Insurance and the courts.

The current penalties for driving uninsured in the state of Idaho are a $75 fine for a first offense, and up to a $1,000 fine for subsequent offenses that occur within five years.

The authors write in the bill’s statement of purpose that the “number of uninsured motorists on Idaho’s roadways is a rising concern.” But according to industry estimates, Idaho has had one of the lowest rates of uninsured motorists in the country.

The Insurance Research Council estimated that fewer than 1 in 10 drivers in the state was on the road without proper coverage in 2009. That placed Idaho as having the seventh-lowest rate in the country. The nationwide uninsured motorist rate was estimated to be about 1 in 7.

According to legislative documents, the bill’s authors estimate the program to cost about $150,000 initially and then $50,000 every year once it is up and running.

The tentative launch date for the verification system would be January 2014.

The bills would keep glass-repair shops or third party administrators who have an ownership interest in a glass-repair shop from referring or steering business toward the facility that they’re associated with.

They would also be barred from soliciting repair business from car owners based on information obtained during the claims process.

As with most steering bills, the authors’ aim is to maintain policyholders’ choice when getting their cars fixed after a claim and to level the playing field for repair shops in the state.

But the insurance industry says beefing up the states’ anti-steering laws would make the repair process less streamlined and that the move could ultimately end up increasing the average cost of car insurance in Arizona and South Carolina.

“This bill would severely limit auto insurers’ ability to choose business practices that best serve their customers, limit choices available to consumers for repairing damaged auto glass and potentially increase costs that impact insurance premiums,” said Bob Passmore, the senior director of personal lines at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), in a statement.

PCI says consumers benefit from insurers’ ability to recommend shops and to use direct repair programs where coverage providers have a list of preferred shops that they suggest to policyholders. These partnerships generally work so that insurers get lower repair costs while the shops get a steadier flow of business.

The industry group contends that these practices make it easier for insurers to match consumers up with reputable shops and to contain costs.

The South Carolina House of Representatives voted to pass its bill in a 104-1 vote, and it is now in the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee.

The Arizona legislation has not seen any votes so far.

January profits for the insurer were $75 million, down from $76.3 million the month before.

Those are pretty good results considering the fact that losses and loss adjustment expenses for the company were up 30 percent for the period. Investment income was also down 4.7 percent.

Buoying the results were growth in premiums written and the performance of securities. Premiums grew 44 percent, going from $1.01 billion up to $1.46 billion. And securities performance went up from a $22.7 million loss in December to a $11.9 million gain in January.

The year-to-year results, however, were not as favorable.

Compared with January 2011, monthly profits were down 33.4 percent, or $37.6 million. Two of the factors contributing to that development were declining gains on securities (they fell $20 million between the first month of 2011 and January 2012) and increases in underwriting, loss and loss adjustment expenses (they grew by a total of $97 million).

Still, net premiums written grew by 6 percent ($83.3 million) between January 2011 and January 2012.

Progressive, which specializes in selling policies to consumers who compare car insurance quotes online through their website or over the phone, remains one of the largest private passenger auto insurers in America. According to the latest data released by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Progressive is the fourth-largest auto insurer in the country in terms of market share.

It has seen significant growth as consumers are increasingly opting to research and purchase coverage through direct channels rather than through agents.

According to the most recent financial release, Progressive had about 8.58 million personal auto policies in place in January 2012. Of those, 45.3 percent were serviced directly through the company. In January 2008, only 37.3 percent of the company’s policies were serviced directly.

To read the experiences of current and former Progressive policyholders, readers can find user-submitted Progressive auto insurance reviews online.

The authors of the bill say that the changes would afford consumers more low cost car insurance choices when it comes to deciding on the types of coverages they want to buy. But the scenarios outlined in the bill foreshadow complicated coverage decisions for motorists and complex claims processes if it is signed into law.

The Current System

Mississippi currently has a tort system in which drivers purchase coverage that goes to pay for other people’s damages that were caused by the policyholder.

So when drivers get into accidents that are caused by another person, they are dependent on the liability policy of the person who caused the accident for compensation; and they will be able to collect compensation only up to the at-fault driver’s policy limits.

The bill’s authors note that this means accident victims’ recovery of compensation is limited by factors that they have no control over.

“The recovery is dependent on, among other things, the conduct of the other driver, the amount of liability insurance (if any) carried by the other driver, and the financial resources (if any) of the other driver,” the bill states. “Under the current system, two individuals who have received identical injuries may recover markedly different amounts.”

Liability-only coverage also provides no coverage for the policyholder in single-vehicle accidents or in crashes caused by an uninsured, underinsured or hit-and-run motorist.

The Proposed PIP Alternative

To remedy this situation, lawmakers are aiming to give drivers the choice to purchase PIP coverage instead of “being forced” to buy a liability policy “to protect strangers.”

Basic PIP policies outlined in the proposal would provide up to $15,000 in coverage that includes:

• Compensation for medical bills that do not exceed the chosen PIP policy limits
• Compensation for loss of income (up to $200 per week)
• Compensation for replacement services (up to $100 per week)
• A death benefit of $10,000

PIP policies would still come with $10,000 in coverage for property damage caused by the policyholder, and motorists would have the option of beefing up coverage limits.

Bill Would Establish a Dual System

While most states that allow drivers to purchase PIP also require them to carry liability coverage to pay for damages that they cause, the Mississippi proposal would amount to a dual system in which PIP and tort liability operate side by side.

But what happens if a person who chose the PIP option causes a crash in which the other party is injured and has no PIP coverage of their own? Would they have no insurance coverage?

The bill says that, in this scenario, the victim’s own liability coverage would defy the standard provisions of a liability policy and pay for the policyholder’s own damages. This is called “tort maintenance coverage,” and it would kick in only in instances where the at-fault party has only PIP coverage and the not-at-fault party has only liability coverage.

When both drivers in an accident have PIP, each of their policies would pay for their own damages.

Motorists would be able to sue the other driver for uncompensated economic loss if their losses exceed the limits of their PIP or tort maintenance coverage policies.

When both drivers have only liability coverage, the claim would be handled the same way it’s handled in the current system.

Tort Maintenance Coverage

Establishing a system in which standard liability insurance reverses itself and pays for the policyholder’s own damages when the at-fault driver has no liability coverage is not a new idea.

At least Massachusetts, Hawaii, Louisiana and Colorado have submitted bills to establish similar systems–all of them failed–and attempts to introduce a dual system in Mississippi go back to at least 1998.

Around the late 1990s, lawmakers at the federal level were even including tort maintenance coverage in their proposals for nationwide tort reform.

It remains to be seen whether the radical changes proposed in the bill will be taken seriously by other lawmakers.

Three of the biggest states that require drivers to carry PIP–Michigan, New Jersey and Florida–are all scrambling for reforms to change their systems. While PIP was originally heralded as a cure-all to expensive and widespread litigation after car accidents, many drivers still sue when their damages exceed PIP limits, and PIP is turning out to be a boon for many unscrupulous individuals trying to game the system.

According to the latest report from the Insurance Research Council (IRC), Mississippi has the biggest uninsured motorist problem in the nation. The IRC estimated that more than a quarter–28 percent–of the state’s drivers were on the road without Mississippi auto insurance in 2009. That’s nearly double the nationwide average for that year.

To combat the problem, lawmakers passed a bill last year to establish an online database that would have matched up registered cars with car insurance policy information. But Gov. Haley Barbour ultimately vetoed the legislation, saying that too little thought had been put into how much the system would cost and that the language of the bill put too much of a burden on the state Department of Public Safety.

The new bill, HB 480, is virtually the same bill as last year’s, except it addresses one of Barbour’s concerns by sharing the responsibility of running the system between the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Revenue.

If lawmakers pass the bill in its current form and Gov. Barbour finds that the new version sufficiently addresses his concerns, the following provisions would take effect:

• Car owners would need to verify through the database that they are insured before being able to register their vehicles.
• Police would be able to access the database 24-7 and could check a driver’s insured status when pulled over for another violation.
• Information contained in the database would supersede any proof of insurance cards provided by the driver.
• Motorists could have their license or registration suspended if they don’t respond to a written inquiry on coverage status, if there’s reason to believe that a car is uninsured or if they are cited for driving without coverage.
• The penalties for driving uninsured would include a fine of between $300 and $500. (The current fine is $500.)

Last year’s bill passed the House on a 73-46 vote and passed the Senate on a 49-0 vote.

Rep. Corbin’s bill would make it so that South Carolina police would be required to tow and impound any vehicles that are being driven without proof of insurance.

The owner would have to pay a $350 fine and any costs for the towing and storage of the vehicle.

Owners of the vehicles would also need to show that they either were in fact insured at the time of the citation or that they have purchased a policy for the car since the citation was issued. Any vehicle not retrieved within 90 days would be considered an abandoned vehicle.

Passage of the bill would add to the penalties for driving uninsured that are already in place.

Currently, drivers can have their driver’s licenses, license plates and vehicle registrations suspended for driving without coverage, and they could have to pay $200 in fees to have them reinstated.

Uninsured motorists are also subject to a $5-a-day fine for each day that they were uninsured, with a cap set at $200.

Lawmakers hope that stepping up the penalties for driving without a policy will encourage more motorists to comply with the state’s financial responsibility laws.

According to the latest estimates from the Insurance Research Council, about 11 percent of drivers in the state were uninsured in 2009, which was below the national average of 13.8 percent.

The text of the legislation does not say how it will affect motorists who have opted to pay the uninsured motorist fee rather than purchase coverage.

South Carolina motorists are allowed by law to pay the Department of Public Safety an annual fee of $550 for the privilege to legally drive an uninsured vehicle.

House Bill 7411 would enact the credit-history ban, while House Bill 7193 would take care of education level and homeowner status.

All of the representatives who introduced and co-introduced the bills are Democrats.

Rhode Island is only one of many states where legislators have pushed to ban insurers’ use of credit scoring in recent years, but practically every one of those pushes has failed. The only state that successfully got a credit-scoring ban into law in recent memory was Massachusetts, and that state already had a regulatory ban on the practice in place.

Many consumer groups say that partly basing the price of coverage on a policyholder’s credit history unfairly hurts lower- and middle-income motorists. But members of the insurance industry–backed by a number of government studies–say that a driver’s credit history has proved to be a relatively accurate predictor of the frequency at which a driver will file claims, as well as the size of those claims.

Rhode Island auto insurance providers are currently free to use information about a person’s credit history to help gauge the risk that he or she poses, but they have a couple restrictions:

Insurers must demonstrate for regulators that their credit-scoring practices do in fact correlate with the actual risk posed by policyholders. They cannot use scores incorporating variables such as whether a consumer has had any credit inquiries, coverage inquiries or collection accounts that have a medical industry code. And a negative credit trend that’s the result of an “extraordinary life event” cannot be taken into account.

The only current regulatory restriction on use of education level and homeowner status is that insurance providers must be able to statistically show that those factors correlate with a driver’s likelihood of filing a claim.

Both bills have been referred to the House Corporations Committee for review.

A large portion of the $150 million recovered for policyholders was the result of coverage disputes, overcharges and unfair denials of claims.

State regulators returned the sum while acting as an objective mediator between insurers and policyholders. When consumers and coverage providers cannot settle their differences themselves, policyholders can bring their complaints to state regulators for some resolution.

For the past three years, consumers have consistently filed the most grievances because they were dissatisfied with the way their insurers handled their claims, according to data compiled and made available by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

More specifically, consumers most frequently complain about delays and denials of claims, as well as dissatisfaction with a claim settlement. Complaints of this type accounted for more than half of the total complaints resolved between 2009 and 2011.

Once a complaint is resolved, the regulatory office enters it into a database and eventually publishes a report showing how many complaints each company had for a given year. Many consumers are encouraged to consult these reports when looking for a new provider so they can get one that has a good track record.

But the fact is that consumers can only gain so much insight into a company’s performance by looking at complaint statistics.

Another, more personal way of getting past and present policyholders’ opinions about a specific policy provider is to research user-submitted car insurance reviews on the Internet.

One place to read and post comments about a company is the car insurance reviews section of OnlineAutoInsurance.com.

The site, which was originally launched in the summer of 2011, has already accumulated hundreds of reviews for 14 of the country’s largest coverage providers.

In a press release issued when the site launched, the company said using both regulator-provided complaint statistics and the user-submitted reviews should give consumers a full picture of a company’s history for customer satisfaction.

The direct-to-consumer car insurer will make available to 15 states in February and more throughout 2012 a new function on its mobile app that allows users to get quotes just by taking pictures of pertinent documents and supplying a little additional information.

The technology is called Image Capture, and it will be integrated right into the mobile quoting process.

Instead of manually inputting personal data–like address, driver’s license number, and vehicle make, model and year–users can just take a photo of their driver’s license and VIN bar code or current insurance card, and the data fields on the app will autopopulate.

“The number you get through our mobile app is a valid quote, not a ballpark,” said Matt Lehman, Progressive’s mobile business leader. “We think it’s important to give consumers an accurate rate, and this technology helps them get that rate quickly.”

After going through the quoting process, users have the option to buy the policy they’ve been quoted for.

The new Image Capture function adds to Progressive’s mobile app capabilities, which already included its cost-to-insure rating function.

That function allows users to punch in up to three vehicles’ make, model and year–or to automatically input that information by taking a photo of their VINs–and they get back a comparison of the cost to insure those vehicles on a scale of 1 to 10.

Although the function didn’t deliver actual quotes, it provides what could be helpful information to shoppers who are looking for a new car and don’t want to be shocked when they see the cost to insure it after driving off the lot.

Insurance-Friendly Car Sharing

Following similar legislative moves in California and Oregon, lawmakers in Washington are pushing to eliminate the negative coverage implications of participating in car-sharing programs.

Currently, auto owners in the Evergreen State would likely see their personal Washington car insurance policies invalidated if they lent their cars out in exchange for money, since the vehicle is being used commercially.

House Bill 2384 fixes that by transferring liability from the car owner to the car-sharing service when the automobile is being used by people other than the owner. So any damages that occur while the car is being rented would be covered by the service’s policy, not the owner’s.

Policies provided by the sharing service would have to provide at least $180,000 worth of total liability coverage–three times the minimum required by the state–as well as comprehensive and collision coverage.

Paving the Way for Usage-Based Programs

There has been rapid growth over the past few years in demand and supply of usage-based insurance options.

Usage-based options often involve an insurer providing a small electronic device that plugs into a diagnostic port on a car. That device then sends policyholder driving data back to the insurer, showing how many miles are put in behind the wheel, how often drivers of the insured car brake hard, and where and at what times of day the car’s driven, among other factors.

These programs in theory reward drivers who put in fewer miles behind the wheel and display safer driving habits.

House Bill 2361 would allow insurers to keep from public inspection the rating methodology used when incorporating usage-based information in pricing formulas. It also states that location data recorded by the devices cannot be collected without the user’s consent and that “individually indentifiable usage information” that’s collected may not be used in any way other than in premium calculations.

Public testimony summarized in a report from the House Business and Financial Services Committee indicate that the legislation would help only one company: Progressive Insurance.

Progressive championed usage-based coverage options with its Snapshot Discount, which is available in nearly every state in the country. But Washington remains one of the few where Snapshot is still not available.

According to a summary of public testimony include in the committee report, a supporter said, “The concerns raised about this bill appear to be based on an inability to compete with a product that is available in most of the country. That product will not be sold in this state without some type of confidentiality protections.”

Progressive owns a handful of patents regarding usage-based coverage, but supporters of the bill noted that the rate filings would be open to public inspections, which would expose the company’s information and possibly lead to the company’s having to defend its patent in court.

The summary of the testimony from individuals “with concerns” said that Progressive–although the company is not named outright in the testimony–is suing other insurers who have tried to develop similar products, and it “should not be given even more protection than their existing patents.”