Online shopping for: Insurance

Gone are the days when a typical American family purchased its insurance at the kitchen table while their agent smiled and dutifully handed them the pen. By 2004, the Internet is expected to influence more than a third of all insurance purchases, according to projections by the research firm International Data Corp.

The reasons are obvious: the Internet enables you to shop for information and quotes whenever you wish and instantly compare features and terms from a wide variety of companies.

This is not to say that having a living, caring insurance agent who knows you by name isn't a good idea. But why would you limit yourself to their few products and prices when literally thousands of offerings are just a click away? At worst, it will arm you with terms and prices for your local agent to match; at best, you'll hook up with great carriers with top products at fire-sale prices.

Understanding insurance sites
Even the most cursory glance at online insurance sites will give you a good sense of the fragmented nature of the industry, at least in the online space. Simply put, it's a jungle out there, with enough sites to make your head spin.

The good news is, you don't have to visit any of them to land top coverage at bottom dollar through a company that is likely to be in business when you need them.

To understand why, it helps to remember that insurance carriers traditionally market their policies through three different channels:

• Independent agents, who often sell the products of multiple companies,
• Exclusive agents, who represent a particular company's products, and
• Direct sales through the company itself.

It stands to reason that an independent agent's Web site likely will provide information and quotes only on those products the agent sells. The sites of an exclusive agent or a major insurance carrier are equally unlikely to provide information or quotes on competing products.

Ironically, to find your best insurance deal, you need not visit a single insurance site, at least initially. So right there you've eliminated the need to shake electronic hands with more than 5,000 insurance carriers and more than 744,000 brokers and agents, according to insurance industry figures compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development.

Now that we've eliminated 99.9 percent of the possibilities, what's left? A virtual handful of unusually well designed and user-friendly sites that offer exhaustive educational resources, insurance news and, best of all, instant insurance rate quotes. You'll find a list of these sites by category at the end of this page.

Screening the candidates
Now that you've done your mouse work and narrowed the field, it's time to screen your semifinal candidates before signing on. You may be able to jump directly from a quote site to the site of the agents or carriers who best measure up. If not, use your favorite search engine to search by name. If they don't turn up there, you may find them through InsuranceNewsNet, which offers an extensive list of links to home, life and health insurance carriers.

Once you've made your site visits and narrowed the field even more, it's time to check the ratings on your finalists. Remember, you want a sound company that's going to be around when the time comes to pay off, especially on your life, home and long-term care policies.

To make sure the company you insure with is sound and financially solid, check their ratings with at least three of the following insurance rating services:

• Standard & Poor's rates more than 4,000 life, home and health insurers.
• A.M. Best Co. rates more than 5,400 life, home and health insurers.
• Moody's rates 700 life and home insurers.

As a final precaution, check with your state's insurance department to make sure your finalist is licensed in your state to sell the insurance you need. You can find a list of state insurance departments on the American Council of Life Insurers site.

Whether you ultimately buy online or, as is more common, receive paperwork and follow through via fax or mail, you will have saved yourself countless hours with agents permanently bonded to your kitchen table by shopping for yourself on the Internet.

Life, health and dental
Here are a few of the major players offering life, health, dental and more:

• Quicken.com offers an extensive insurance library, easy-to-input rate quote forms and a toll-free 800 number for live help with term life, health, auto, home, and renter's insurance. Use its insurance planner, family needs planner, auto risks evaluator and life events advisor to help figure your insurance needs.
  
  
• QuickQuote, founded in 1995 and owned by ING, the world's 25th largest corporation, offers quotes on term life, health, auto and discount dental/prescription policies.
  
  
• iLeads.com offers quotes on life, health, auto, home, disability, annuity and long-term care, as well as an extensive library and glossary.
  
  
• Pivot doesn't offer health quotes, but makes up for it with a dizzying array of life products, auto, home and RV insurance. Simple, easy to navigate, with handy planning tools, FAQ/glossary, ratings guide and state-specific buyer's guide.
  
  
• ReliaQuote offers life quotes and it'seasy to navigate. ReliaQuote is an affiliate of Motley Fool.com and shares that site's independent, pro-consumer approach.
  
  
• InsWeb.com is a clean, easy-to-navigate site that offers instant quotes on auto, home, health and term life. One nice feature: InsWeb can save your account information for future searches.
  
  
• Insure.com is arguably the most robust one-stop insurance site on the Web. In addition to quotes on auto, life, home, health and annuities, its resources include a complaint finder, lawsuit library, links, reader forum and a state-by-state ranking of insurance companies.
  
  
• IntelliQuote quotes on its core product, term life, but offers auto, home, health and disability.
  
  
• Yahoo! Finance offers full free quotes through InsWeb for shoppers who are more comfortable in the Yahoo! environment.
  

Term life
Here are good starting points to find a term life policy:

• AccuTerm prides itself in providing the most accurate quotes and only lists carriers rated A (excellent) or better by A.M. Best. Offers the five lowest quotes.
• Quotetermlife.com provides a dozen quotes from major carriers.

Auto insurance

• Autobytel.com and AutoWeb both have handy links to auto insurance quotes while you're shopping for your dream car.
• Need a refresher on how to buy auto insurance? Check out our Bankrate story to get the basics down before you browse.

-- Updated: March 28, 2003