The rates consumers shop for car insurance has gone down to the lowest level in the last 5 years, with only 25% of insurance customers indicating they shopped for a new insurer in the past 12 months, down 8% from 2011.

Despite over $5 billion in advertising and marketing spent in 2011. Since most car insurance renews every 6 months, policyholders could shop (online?) twice per year. But since the 2009 downturn, consumers have slowed their shopping for new policies.

Every car insurer promises to save shoppers $400 over the competition. So if buyers actually realize that savings, they decided they would not get much benefit from searching again in 2011 & 2012. Still some people actually get hired, move or get married and look for a new carrier.

For Car insurance buyers who went online for a new policy in 2011, 43% switched providers — the highest rate since the study first began measuring retention in 2008, and an increase of 3% from 2011. Car insurers are not marketing the price savings that were not there during the insurance price wars 2 years ago.

Insurance companies are raising rates to cover claims. State filings to increase premiums have gone up. So now they are focusing on different parts of the car insurance market like motorcycle owners, or renters insurance.

I believe car insurers should focus on fundamentals within a car insurance policy, like how much car insurance drivers need. Maybe a special auto insurance deductible.

In California, around 15% of drivers are uninsured. That is a higher risk, but potentially profitable market. And the insurers are not competing with any old loyalty. For the most part, insurers have done a good job educating policy holders about how car insurance works, now they need to market cost savings within a policy.

Enough with the talking Geico lizards and cavemen!

In a JD Power US Insurance Shopping Study, over half of insurance shoppers requested a quote online rather than calling a phone number. Even though about half of all Web quotes are closed by either an agent or call center representative, customers are equally using insurance company websites. Last month by the research company .

In 2010, a comScore report found that auto insurance companies delivered 37 million quotes, with almost 3 million policies purchased or 10% conversion. Compared to the study in 2009, that is a 3% decrease in total quotes and 1% increase in policies bought.

Quote volume increased over 300% from 9.5 million since 2006 policies bought online went up 50% by an additional 1.3 million.