Top Secret Hacks to Lower Teenager Insurance Premiums. We can all certainly use that! This is an interview with Randy Karp of Karp Insurance Services on how to lower premiums with teenage drivers.

So many of us have teenagers and they are a blessing and sometimes not.  We had lots with our children getting their drivers license and subsequently getting into accidents and that type of thing. Click our video for more.

So what can you tell us about teenagers and driving and the insurance that attaches to them.

Randy - 

• Well, first of all, they need to be good students. A 3.0 makes a big difference on the premium and people might say well, why is that? I can only speculate as to why that is but the numbers prove that a good student is at much lower risk than a non-good student.

• Beyond that though, is that you really want to take your time with your teenager. for instance, let them know that it’s not safe to tailgate. You have to reiterate it’s not safe to text and drive and - you see it all the time. You still see it all the time - people texting and driving.

• And then you know as far as other situations - making a left hand turn - you want to make absolutely sure that it’s clear before you make a left hand turn and I’ll use a personal experience.

There are three lanes going up Hawthorne Boulevard around Newton Street. And so a two lane stop for me. I crossed and the third lane didn’t stop and broadsided me. Well, that was my fault.

You know, I’m going across traffic, that was my fault. So that was a chargeable accident.  That can very easily happen where you have three lanes of traffic.

You have two lanes and you go, but the third one is not. So you have a lot of situations where you have to be really careful.

Clara - 

So now what happens when the teenagers go off to college? I hear that there’s some kind of insurance where they can get partial insurance because they’re not home all the time and they’re not driving.

Do you offer anything like that?

Randy - 

Well, there are a couple options and yes, we do.

• We can exclude them for the period of time that they are away at school if they’re not driving. So people don’t have to pay any premium for them for that period of time and then we can reinstate them over the Christmas holidays and that sort of thing. So, you know over summer we’ll reinstate them and then when they go off to school again, we can exclude them again during that time.

So you know that’s going to help a lot of clients who have teenagers. I they don’t have that sort of program, they’re going to be overpaying by a lot. It’s expensive.

• There’s also a program where if they’re over a hundred miles away at school without the car, then thats a cheaper premium. So that’s a good option if they think that their college bound son or daughter is going to drive at all. If they’re going to drive a friend’s car and if there’s that possibility, you don’t want to have them excluded because there could be a liability claim that would come back against this kid.

Clara - 

So when they come home, let’s say that they have been excluded from the policy and now they come home and then they use the car to go grocery shopping, would they be covered at that time or not?

17:09

Randy - 

They’re only covered after they get in touch with our office and we require by via email so that we can, you know, date, and set the time and hour.

Clara - 

Right - document everything.

Randy - 

And then they say, you know, they send us an email. Say “please put Joe back on the policy effective now.” And then we have that time.

So if there is an accident that happens at 3:55 and at 4:10 they send us an email, we can say “sorry.” But if they send us an email at 4 o’clock and the accident is at 4:10, we’re golden.

We can go back to our adjuster and say yeah, I know it happened fairly quickly, but here’s the evidence.

Clara -

That’s really interesting. So just an email would be sufficient to be able to put the policy back in place or put the protection back in place? Correct?

Randy - 

Correct.

Clara - 

I know that if you make a phone call and leave a message, that doesn’t count. Right?

Randy - 

We don’t like that.

Clara - 

That’s too difficult to prove.

Randy - 

Well, yeah. The problem is, how do you prove it? You say well, I left a message and go back and forth. Email is pretty rock solid.

So we like to be very cautious.

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