What is the Best Car Insurance for Teens?

Finding the best cheap car insurance for your teenage driver can be a pretty difficult prospect. Teens are routinely placed in the highest risk pool by insurance carriers because statistically, they are far more likely to be involved in accidents and to be ticketed for driving violations than any other age group.

Everyone driving on roadways is obliged to carry auto insurance, so finding coverage for your teen is a legal requirement, but you’ll probably find that it’s not an easy task to find the right coverage without breaking the bank. In this discussion, we’ll consider what you can expect to pay for insurance coverage for your teen driver, and we’ll touch on what some of the best options might be for securing that coverage.

What is the Average Insurance Rate for a Teen Driver?

A survey of insurance carriers, which was recently conducted, determined that an individual car insurance policy purchased for a teen driver would cost an average of $438 per month, and that’s not even the best car insurance out there; just average. Obviously, this is a huge amount of money to pay for insurance, because if you project that over a 12-month span, it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000. You can do a little better than that when you simply add your teen driver to an existing family policy, in which case you might expect to pay an average of $278 per month, or around $3,300 per year.

While both of these figures might really hit you in the gut, the family policy would seem to be a much easier pill to swallow. Keep in mind that you may be able to find a much lower rate with a specific carrier, but since these figures represent averages, it’s also possible that you’d have to pay more than those quotes in certain situations.

If you’re wondering why the cost of insurance is so high for teenage drivers, the simple answer is that they pose the biggest risk to insurance carriers, and they are the likeliest group to make a claim against their policies. The latest figures show that motor vehicle accidents involving teens cost insurance companies somewhere between $13 billion and $15 billion every year. This is understandable, given the fact that teens are generally very new to driving, and they’re prone to making mistakes behind the wheel.

Statistically, drivers aged between 16 and 19 are three times more likely to be involved in a fatal automobile accident than are drivers above the age of 20. The simple truth is that teens have not yet fully developed in most cases, and they are still several years away from being mature individuals, which means they are much more likely to engage in risky driving behaviors. Insurance carriers are well aware of all these facts, and that’s why they charge such high rates for policies issued to teen drivers.

What are the Best Insurance Options for Teens?

Given the quotes for monthly premiums above, it’s easy to see how important it is to find an affordable insurance carrier for your teen driver. It’s no exaggeration to say that getting the right coverage can save you several thousand dollars every year, and can be much easier on your monthly budget. With that in mind, some of the most affordable insurance rates can still be found for your teen driver, when you work with a company that can scour the whole country to find good coverage at a reasonable rate.

Believe it or not, it is still possible to find an insurance carrier who will cover your teen for less than $150 per month, and that equates to less than $1,500 per year. Some of these insurance carriers will even offer discounts to teens who take a driving course which is designed to help make them a better driver. Some insurance companies will also provide discounts to teens who have good grades in school because it shows a certain level of responsibility and dedication.

There are family discounts available for adding your teen into the family insurance policy, and it’s also possible to achieve accident forgiveness or coverage for multiple vehicles if you find just the right insurance company. Some of the specific carriers who offer these low rates and discounts to teens are Geico, USAA, Travelers Insurance, and State Farm Insurance. There are others of course, but if you work with an insurance agent, you’ll be able to find several of these, and one of them should be a good fit for your teen’s coverage requirements.

Given that the national average for auto insurance covering teen drivers is somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,500, anything substantially less than that is a huge bargain. Erie Insurance offers a policy with annual premiums of around $2,400, and that is approximately one third the cost of the national average. This shows that bargains can be found, although it may take some serious searching and negotiating in order to find the right policy and the right price.

Also offering considerably lower rates than the national average are insurance carriers such as The Cincinnati and Chubb, both well below national figures for teen auto insurance. Sometimes it’s one of the larger insurance carriers which can offer you the best rate, and sometimes it works out to be a relatively obscure company which you might not have heard of.

One of the five largest auto insurance companies in this country offers an annual rate of $2,539 for a female teen driver and $2761 for a male teen driver on average. The slight difference in annual rates is due to the fact that females tend to mature faster than males, and are considered slightly less of a risk to an insurance company than are their male counterparts.

Being a large insurance carrier does not necessarily translate to being the cheapest, because it happens very often that statewide and regional carriers are able to provide the lowest rates in their specific areas. This is why it’s important to have an agent working for you which has access to a huge number of carriers so that the very best rate can be found for your teen driver.

Insuring Teens at Affordable Rates

From the above, it should be clear that it can literally save you a ton of money if you find the right auto insurance carrier to provide coverage for your teen. We have access to more carriers than almost any other insurance agent, so we’ll work until we find just the right policy and the right rates for your teen driver.