Nicole: I personally think that it should count. However, most insurance companies, any discount you give you have to file with the state in order to be approved to give those discounts. So they have very specific rules.
Daniel: How about employee discounts? Can I file my latest performance review, which may go down after this backwards thing?
Nicole: You might want to do that before your review comes out. But, no. As insurance agents, we don’t even get company discounts or anything like that. Again, everything is regulated by the state.
Daniel: Well, I will buy you a cup of coffee to make up for it.
Nicole: Thanks, Dan!
Daniel: Chase, there’s a couple other discounts that we can talk about.
Chase: That’s right, Dan. One of the first ones would be defensive driving, or the defensive driver discounts. A lot of times when we think of taking a defensive driving course, it might be in lieu after you were given some sort of citation. The court says you can take defensive driving in order for it to not stay on your record. However, you can also be proactive with it too. They are not that costly of exams anymore and you can go ahead and enroll in one. Most carriers are gonna give you a break there too. The other thing is if we’re looking at things the customer can do, telematics is one. You hear about all the companies having different types of programs that will monitor your driving habits, like speeding.
Nicole: I don’t think I’m a good candidate for that.
Chase: All sorts of other driving habits — your mileage and things like that — that we could go on and on about. But other than that safety features of your vehicle specifically can also give you a different kind of discount. The newer model vehicles with different anti-theft device and safety features. All that stuff can give you a huge break on your cost.
Daniel: It’s important to note, too, and we do talk about safety features. These cars with the back-up cameras, and the “lane change” alerts and stuff like that. Even though these are essentially safety features, it doesn’t actually reduce our insurance that much?
Chase: No.
Daniel: You think it would, but why not? We’re making these leaps and bounds — it should, shouldn’t it?
Chase: The idea is that with all those safety features, to replace the cost of a bumper that has cameras installed in it and sensors and all of that nowadays. Versus, even just ten to fifteen years ago where that wasn’t commonplace, just a fraction of the cost.