May Auto Insurance News Wrap-Up

LOS ANGELES, May 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Policy prices continued their slow ascent, two states signed "no pay, no play" proposals into law, the Kansas government banned crash taxes statewide, Allstate finalized plans for a $1 billion acquisition and a report indicated that 37 million quotes were generated through online auto coverage sites in 2010. The following summary sheet outlines some of May's most significant auto insurance news developments reported by News.OnlineAutoInsurance.com:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest edition of the monthly Consumer Price index report, indicating that the price of insuring a vehicle in the United States bumped up by 0.2 percent between March and April. Coverage policy prices in April 2011 were 3.8 percent higher than in April 2010. Source: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid1104.pdf
• Marketing-research company comScore announced the major findings of its 2011 Online Auto Insurance Report on Shopping and Servicing Activity. The results showed that the number of policy quotes generated online in 2010 (37 million) was down slightly (-1 percent) from last year. The annual number of quotes submitted in 2010 was 35 percent larger than the amount submitted in 2006.
• The governors of Oklahoma and Kansas both signed "no pay, no play" bills into law. The new laws will limit drivers' ability to collect noneconomic damages after an accident if they were uninsured at the time of the accident. The laws are intended to temper uninsured motorist rates.
• Kansas also approved a new ban on emergency response fees, more commonly known as "crash taxes."  The ban will stop cities and other public entities in the state from billing individuals and their insurance companies for the cost of dispatching public emergency services to car accident scenes.
• Allstate announced that it will be purchasing online insurer Esurance and quote-comparison site Answer Financial from White Mountains Insurance Group for $1 billion in order to stay competitive in the Web-based market.

To check out the articles about these and other coverage-related news developments, readers should head to http://news.onlineautoinsurance.com/ where visitors will find the only site on the Web devoted to publishing nothing but reports on the latest newsworthy happenings in the U.S. coverage industry.

SOURCE Online Auto Insurance, LLC