[jreposa]

I'm glad you put up the notice about California rates only. I'm in NYC and saw that I was paying nearly double what I should be paying within the same insurer.

My question... Is it possible to vary that much between the different states?

[jasontraff]

The short answer is yes.

Because insurance is regulated on a state-by-state level, each insurer will submit different models to different states. For example, in California doesn't include credit score and New York does - this alone could change your rates by 60%.

However, while the final prices may not be the same, the magnitude changes that happen to your prices as you make different selections (ie changing your vehicle or get a speeding ticket) will be largely similar across states.

[jreposa]

Now that I remember it... I found it odd that it was asking me my profession. I entered Engineer and it dropped substantially.

Anyways congrats! It's really interesting stuff. I have very similar issues to Leaky on my personal finance/banking startup. Really like the way you incorporated the ratings at the end.

[randomdata]

In my test, there was almost a $200/yr. difference between Engineer and Software Engineer. I wonder what makes software engineers specifically statistically poorer drivers?

[jasontraff]

Some companies draw distinctions that sometimes seem arbitrary, which is another reason that we think Leaky is helpful.

However, there's almost always a statistical analysis for the decisions that they make and it may have nothing to do with driving record. It might be that one profession stays with the insurer longer or is a more profitable customer by allowing the insurer to insurer multiple-lines for them (house, life, etc.).

[webjprgm]

Huh. So now all of us "Software Engineers" will start claiming to be "Engineers" on our auto insurance, and then the insurance companies will have to recalculate their rates to raise them on the "Engineer" category.

[jasontraff]

Yeah some companies do _really_ big discounts for profession -- engineer being one of the better ones.