Consumers can access the “best” insurance information from state insurance department websites in California, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Texas and Utah, while other states’ insurance regulatory websites must improve, according to consumer advocates.
The “best” insurance department websites in the six states are easy to navigate and allow consumers to perform tasks such as comparing auto insurance premiums, filing a complaint against an insurance company or reporting insurance fraud, according to InsuranceQuotes.com.
The California site provides phone numbers and web addresses all of the auto insurers operating in the state, and a comparison-shopping guide. The Kansas site has information about how to file an auto accident claim.
The Ohio site delivers information on health care reform, including a glossary of terms, an overview of the federal health care reform law and information about COBRA.
The Texas site features a section about auto, renter’s and health insurance devoted to teens and young adults.
The Utah site has a fact section on how consumers’ credit history affects their auto insurance premiums.
Other state websites
Websites for less than half (45%) of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., provided a glossary of terms for auto, home and renter’s insurance, according to a 2008 Consumer Federation of America study.
Less than a third (31%) of state insurance department websites let consumers file fraud reports online, and 59% offered an online form for consumers to file a complaint, the 2008 study found.
What consumers want
State insurance departments must update their websites to offer credibility, cost comparison and simplicity, if they want consumers to benefit from the websites.
It is important that consumers sense the credibility of their states’ insurance department websites, Brenda Cude, a professor of housing and consumer economics at the University of Georgia and consumer representative for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).
“There is so much out there that it is important that when consumers see something from a state agency, they know that it is backed by the government and it’s not trying to sell them something or offer them biased information,” Cude, said in a September 2010 study. “Consumers have very little patience. They’ll move on if they can’t figure out real quick whether the website will do harm to them or their computer or whether the information will do them harm.”
Insurance consumers also want to be able to compare costs for insurance premiums, and want to know which insurers had the most complaints, Cude and colleague William Fleming found in the 2008 Consumer Federation of America study.
Complaint ratios are the total number of upheld complaints against a company divided by the number of policies the company has written in that state.
6 ‘best’ state insurance websites listed; others lagging via IFAwebnews .
