Do You Know Your Insurance Score?
Atlanta Journal-Constitution—May 17th, 2010
More of us are paying attention to the rules our credit card companies send us or the fine print on our mortgages. Here’s yet another financial ripple to watch for: Your credit score can affect what you pay for homeowners or auto insurance.
The practice by insurance companies of using credit histories to set rates has been around for more than 15 years.
But now that the country is in a historic financial pit, some are asking if the practice is still valid.
As might be expected, the answer depends on whom you ask.
“All the factors in the models deteriorate because of the financial market downturn,” said Birny Birnbaum, executive director of the Council for Economic Justice, a nonprofit advocacy group for minority and low-income consumers. Birnbaum formerly was an associate commissioner for policy and research and chief economist at the Texas Department of Insurance.
The center “called for a moratorium on insurance scoring because consumers shouldn’t be penalized because of reckless spending decisions of lenders,” he said.
Read More: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
