Most Albertans don’t seek competitive quotes for auto insurance: AIRB survey

Sixty-five per cent of survey respondents living in Alberta indicated they had not sought competitive auto insurance quotes in the past two years, according to a 2009 public perception survey commissioned by the Alberta Automobile Insurance Rate Board (AIRB).
The survey included 800 interviews of adult Alberta residents, resulting in a 3.5% margin of error, accurate 19 times out of 20.
Of the 35 % of respondents that did seek competitive quotes, most got only two or three quotes before proceeding to purchase.
A majority (63%) of the quote-seekers said they obtained their quotes by means of telephone calls to brokers (down from 71% in 2008).
[Respondents were allowed to give multiple answers to the question of how they obtained their quotes, so the 63% figure above and the numbers below do not add up to 100%.]
Twenty-five per cent said they obtained the quotes by visiting their broker personally (down from 26% in 2008).
Twenty-five per cent of the quote-seekers said they obtained their quotes through Web sites (down from 26% in 2008).
When asked specifically about their perceptions of automobile insurance, 25% of respondents “indicated they or someone in their household had experienced excessively high automobile insurance rates (a significant decrease from 29% in 2008),” the report found.
When asked to rate their level of agreement with the statement “automobile insurance premiums are fair and reasonable,” 59% of respondents agreed with the statement in 2009 (60% did in 2008), 16% indicated a neutral response (17% in 2008) and 26% disagreed (23% in 2008).
Respondents were also asked if there had ever been a period of time when they, or someone covered by their insurance policy, had stopped carrying automobile insurance coverage for any reason. Thirteen per cent said yes (comparable to 14% in 2008).