Paying by the Mile for Car Insurance

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January 22, 2019

What is so radically new in auto insurance? How about paying for insurance based on the actual number of miles you drive annually?
Scott Richardson, President of State Street Insurance, a locally owned Bellingham Insurance agency, explains it this way: there are three insurance companies in Washington currently offering insurance plans where you only pay for the miles you drive. The largest of these is Allstate Insurance, which is using telematics to redefine its auto insurance experience through innovative offerings like Milewise.
 
Milewise is Allstate’s pay-as-you-go insurance product, which provides customers a modern alternative to a traditional auto policy. With the same full coverage that a traditional policy offers, Milewise gives customers greater control of their insurance costs.


This is a great option for customers who:
  • Drive limited miles each year
  • Have multiple vehicles but not all are driven regularly (over 8,000 miles per year)
  • Commute to work or school by bus or carpool, and their vehicle sits for most of the week
  • Are retired or students and primarily drive on weekends
If you fit into any of these scenarios, Milewise may be the right option for you. With Milewise, your payments are not fixed each month like the traditional payment plans offered by most insurance companies. Instead, your cost varies based on the number of miles you drive.
When you get a price quote, you get an estimate based on the number of miles you think you will drive a specific vehicle in a year. If you drive less than the number of miles you estimated, you would pay less, and if you drove more, you would pay more.
To measure your daily mileage, a device is plugged into the OBD (on board diagnostic device) port located in most vehicles built after 1998. This device sends a signal to Allstate, allowing them to record your true miles each day. Milewise provides customers greater personalization and transparency into auto insurance like never before, allowing them to track their progress and usage on their cell phones by downloading the Milewise app.
In his 40 years as an insurance agent, Richardson finds this to be one of the most radical changes in the auto insurance industry, and he believes that this is the way of the future for the industry.
If you want to know more about Milewise, feel free to contact Scott Richardson at 360-676-1822 or srichardson@allstate.com, or by stopping by his agency located at 1901 N Sate Street, Bellingham, WA.