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What To Do If Your Auto Insurance Policy is Non-renewed

Just because an insurance company has issued you with an auto insurance policy once, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll renew the policy at the end of the term. Think about that before making such a nuisance of yourself that you need your own full time agent! Not really, I know you wouldn’t do that, but there are a few reasons why an insurance company might decide to leave you to one of their competitors.

Non-Renewal -vs – Cancellation

Maybe we should first of all clarify the difference between non-renewal and cancellation. Non-renewal means that you have had an insurance policy which has run full term (and maybe thought that everything was going along swimmingly), but at the end of the term of the policy they decide against dealing with you again.  This is different from rescission (they cancel the policy taking everything back to the beginning and give you a refund of any monies paid) or cancellation, (they cancel the policy midway through before it has reached the expiration date). They must, however, give you prior warning in writing of any of the above before it happens!

Why A Company Might Not Renew an Auto Insurance policy

Basically, an insurance company can decide not to deal with you again for a whole multi-tude of reasons, except:

• gender
• age
• color
• race
• creed
• occupation
• ancestry
• marital status
• physical handicap (as it is defined in the law)
• employer

They also can’t make their decision based only on credit report information, and if any of this information is a part of the reason for non-renewal of your auto insurance policy, then they are required to tell you the name of the credit bureau which supplied them with the info so that you can get a report yourself and check out its details.

If an insurance company do decide against renewing your auto insurance policy then they have to tell you in writing, including an explanation as to the reason why.  They’ll send this in writing to your last known address so if you move house you’d better remember to tell them, they only have to prove mailing the notice, not that you’ve actually received or acted upon it. They’ve got to let you know a minimum of 30 days before the auto insurance is up for renewal if you’ve had the policy for 5 years or less, and 60 days if you’ve had the auto insurance policy for more than 5 years.