Looking for buying a car insurance policy online? Wondering if offline or online is a better choice? Here has a look what is the difference between the two.
Buying an insurance for your car can sometimes be confusing and tedious given a plethora of options in front of you. With the advent of technology and introduction of online insurance, the choices have increased further as compared to previous years. If you wish to purchase an insurance for your car, you need to do a thorough research and compare the policies and insurance quotes from different insurance companies. Purchasing a car insurance would thus, require ample amount of time and effort. You can either opt to buy insurance online or buy it offline through an agent or dealer. Let us compare the process of buying car insurance online versus offline on several factors:
Cost
Buying your car insurance online will be much cheaper as compared to buying an insurance offline. A very simple reason for this is that an online insurance does not require any agent commission or brokerage cost which can then be passed on to you as a discount. In addition, to attract customers, online companies can offer new user discount, year-end discount or other festival offers which are hard to find in case of offline insurance. It is a good practice to compare the insurance cost online before actually buying the insurance. Several insurance aggregators are available that compare the policies and premium costs of different insurance companies and make your job easier.
The process
The process of buying a car insurance is much simpler and faster when you do it online as compared to when you do it offline. With the latest technology, all the information is available on a click of your mouse and the entire process of comparing the policy, selecting the policy, reading the terms and conditions and making the payment can now be done in just a few hours. More importantly, you skip the tedious task of filling a number of policy documents.
However, if you try to buy insurance offline, you may have to spend a lot of time in meeting the agent, discussing the policy, selecting the policy, making the payment and finally receiving the policy documents at your address. Practically all these steps may take you at least 2-3 days.
Transparency
This is a very important factor to zero down your preference of buying car insurance.
In case of online car insurance, you can read through the terms and conditions of the policy and know the actual policy wording even before buying the insurance. You can save the policy details for your future reference and ensure that you get what you see and what you pay for.
On the other hand, if you buy car insurance offline through a dealer or an agent you may get to see the actual policy papers only after making the payment. An agent may mould his wordings to win a deal. Hence if you go for an offline insurance, always buy it from a very reliable and trustworthy source.
Claim Settlement
Since most of the private insurance companies are now present online, the claim settlement process has also become very easy. Most of the companies provide an excellent feature of filing your claims online and checking the status of the same. Online filing expedites the reimbursement or cashless process, as the case may be.
In case you wish to buy your car insurance offline, you will have to contact the offline dealer at every step of making the clam. You may be required to personally visit him to submit the claim documents, the policy documents, car registration and insurance papers etc. Needless to say, this will require much more time to process.
Support
In case of online car insurance, you will get a 24 hours’ support from the insurance company. Most of these companies have a dedicated team of professionals who cater to the needs of the buyers. They address all possible questions and concerns that you may possibly have.
In case of an offline purchase, limited support may be available and the turnaround time for a resolution may be high.
Summary
Thus, if you wish to purchase a car insurance in the near future, keep in mind the above few factors before deciding whether to buy car insurance online or offline. In general, each has its own pros and cons so an informed decision needs to be taken.