Are your kids in college? Did they just start driving? Tune into this short video to understand how you can protect yourself from the potential additional liability of having your kids out in the world!

We also discuss potential discounts available on these policies for good grades and/or frequency of driving.

This video is part of an interview between Nathan Donohue and Sophie Riley. Look for our five short releases highlighting each section.

Transcript:

For clients that have kids that are going off to college, something I remember I was interested in when we talked before, clients' children are leaving to go to college. How do they want to view or modify their insurance portfolio based upon those family changes?

Another question I get a lot, as you can imagine. So, the first thing I would recommend for folks is to notify your insurance agent. Really, with any changes to your insurance, portfolio, it's always best to notify the carrier so they can note your files, right? Because at the end of the day, insurance is a contract between the insurance company and the insured, right? And you're transferring your risk in exchange for premium and so the more information an insurance company has, the smoother a claim is going to be handled, is what I've found in my experience and no surprises that way.

Right.

No surprises and if there's a change in your situation, just send them a note. You know, you can send me a note and say, hey, you know, my kid is going to college in a few months. What should I do?

Right.

And so, the first number one is, is notify your agent. And then the next thing to mention is as a brokerage firm, we have access to so many different companies and all companies are going to handle different situations in their own method in a way that works for their underwriting and so on. So, one thing that we typically see on auto policies is that when you have a student who is going away to college, there are a couple of different discounts that can be added. One that is called, a distant student discount and it's really neat because what that is for is it is essentially a way to tell the insurance company, hey, my kid is going away to college. They're not taking a car with them.

They're going to come and visit. They're going to drive on holidays. They're going to drive in the summer, but they're not a regular daily driver anymore.

The risk has been reduced and as a result of which the insurance company offers a discount because that person's not there to drive the vehicle on a regular basis. Thus, the frequency of risk, a potential risky outcome is reduced.

Exactly. And I really appreciate that because you know, I think that makes a lot of sense overall, right? and it gives you the comfort of knowing they're still listed on the policy, they're a listed driver, but you're just not paying such a substantial amount of premium for them. So, if they're not, so you know, when you say my kids go to college, there's a couple of questions, right? One, are they taking a car or not?

If they're not taking a car, the distance student discount will apply, and if they are taking a car, then we still need to notify and so, most of our underwriters will say, what's the school? What's the garaging address? Which vehicle are they taking?

Right.

And so, we say, OK, this, you know, the Honda is going to Boston. It's still going to be registered. You know, a lot of times if it's a temporary situation, you don't always have to change the registration.

Right.

So, it might still be registered in Washington and they're driving it over. They're not actually getting, let's say, if they're going to call it in Boston, they're not necessarily having to get it a Massachusetts auto policy. You can still have it on your Washington policy, which typically keeps it more cost effective. And then just list that vehicle at a different garage and address.

Interesting. Yeah. To your point on just information sharing, I don't think that's folks' initial inclination is to share more information with their insurance company but now hearing you talk about that distant driver discount, I imagine that most families are probably walking right past the savings and not even taking advantage of it.

Yeah, that's actually a good point. So super interesting.

One more point there. Yeah. The good student discount with most folks starts receiving once their children are licensed, assuming they are getting a 3.0 GPA or higher. The insurance company typically won't want documentation for that, but they're not going to continue to ask you and how to do for that. They just need it one time. They send them the most recent transcript, you know, report card, and they will add that credit to the policy. Well, that still applies for college and for, you know, med school, graduate school. That good student discount continues to apply. So, in a way, you might have a significant savings when you have your child away at college without a vehicle and they get a good student discount because then they're getting both those discounts.

You could be raking in the savings.

Yeah, and you just, you know, you got to remind them that they need to keep their grades up.

Yeah, absolutely. More incentive.