Cheap car insurance with a bad credit score

Setting the annual premium rate is all about assessing the risk you will make a claim. In making this assessment, the insurers rely on a number of different factors each of which is supposed to say something about you as a person. In this, your driving record is only one factor albeit an important one. When you get behind the wheel of a car, you don't stop being the person you are.

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So if you have recently had your leg amputated, it doesn't grow back. Or if you are going through a divorce and are prone to burst into tears, you can be distracted when driving. For better or worse, we are who we are. Not just when it comes to insurance, but also when you apply for a job and enquire about renting a property, your credit score is relevant. Does your financial track record suggest you will be able to make payments when they fall due? Whether you have dealt with your own money responsibly could indicate whether you can be trusted with an employer's money.


Yet this is not completely fair. Cheap car insurance should be mainly about how well you drive. The credit score may have been affected because you recently fell ill and had big medical bills to pay. To protect your interests when there are extenuating circumstances, you should take positive steps to explain the problem to the insurer. Silence simply means you will be given a higher rate. More importantly, take positive steps to put your finances back on to a sound basis. Set up payment plans and start paying down all your debts. By liaising with your creditors, you earn better reports and your score improves.

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If you are blameless, the low score may be the result of mistakes by the credit reporting companies. You have a statutory right to a free copy of your credit history from the three major agencies. If you find errors, you are entitled to have the mistakes corrected. If the agency objects for some reason, you have the right to add a comment to the history. This explains the disagreement on the facts and leaves it to the insurers and everyone else who uses the credit reports, to make their own decisions. In most states, the Insurance Commissioners have regulations allowing you to alert your insurance company to the errors and have the rates recalculated.

A few insurers will backdate the rate if it's clear the mistake was wholly the responsibility of the credit bureau. Most only change the rate as from the date you give notice of the correction. With cheap car insurance so necessary in today's difficult economic times, you should spread your right to a free copy of the history over four month periods. With a report from each of the three bureaus, you can monitor whether there are new mistakes and correct them immediately. That way, you should be able to maintain your cheap car insurance.