Four Years on a Parent's Policy — Does Any of It Count When You Go Solo?

The scenario (hypothetical): say you're 23. You have been a listed driver on a parent's policy since you were 17, and you just bought a car of your own. One company's quote form asks about "prior insurance in your name." Your parents' company says you may get a credit if you stay with them. Which of your six years actually count?

What travels with you to any insurer

• Years of driving experience. The third mandatory rating factor is defined in 10 CCR 2632.5(c)(3) as the number of years the rated driver has been licensed to drive in any jurisdiction. Not years named on a policy — years licensed. Your six count.
• Your driving safety record. The first mandatory factor under Insurance Code 1861.02 belongs to you, not to the policy you were on.
• Good Driver eligibility. Section 1861.025 asks whether you have been licensed for the previous three years and kept a clean enough record over that time. Being a named insured is not one of the tests.

What may not travel: the loyalty credit

California's rating rules allow a persistency credit, and they say exactly who can get it. A company may give one at renewal, or on a new policy for someone already insured with that company or an affiliate — and that expressly includes a listed driver who is not the named insured. What no insurer may do is base persistency, in whole or in part, on coverage from a non-affiliated insurer, and that rule applies to proof of prior insurance too.

So the years you spent on your parents' policy can support a loyalty credit at their company or its affiliates. At an unrelated company, they cannot. Whether a particular company offers persistency at all, and how much it is worth, is in that company's own filed class plan — ask rather than assume.

The protection that cuts the other way

Insurance Code 1861.02(c) says the absence of prior automobile insurance coverage, in and of itself, cannot be a criterion for Good Driver eligibility or generally for rates, premiums or insurability. A company cannot treat you as a worse risk simply because no policy was ever in your name.

Side by side

What to do with this

1. Ask your parents' company for a quote on your own policy and ask, by name, whether a persistency credit applies to you as a listed driver.
2. Get quotes from unrelated companies too. A persistency credit is one line; the other company's filed rates for your car, mileage and record may still come out ahead.
3. Keep a copy of a declarations page showing you as a listed driver — some underwriters ask for it, even though it cannot earn persistency elsewhere.
4. Start your own policy before you come off theirs, so there is no day when your car is uninsured.

Want both routes priced against each other? Send us your license date and your parents' insurer and we will show you where the years actually count.