The Lowdown on your Car Insurance Declarations Page

Q: Why doesn’t the declarations page of my car insurance policy tell me what is covered under my car insurance policy?

A: It all comes down to expenses. The declarations page of your car insurance policy gives the policy specific details of what your coverages are and what they cost. The declarations page is also only a few pages, so it is not all that expensive to mail out to you every 6 to 12 months.

The legal contact part of your car insurance policy, however, can be 20 to 70 pages. This is much more expensive to mail out and if you multiple that by how many clients an insurance company has, the expenses can be astounding. So to save money, insurance companies only send out the declarations pages when your policy renews. These are really the only pages that change at renewal, so unless there is a revision in the policy contract there is really no reason to send the same contract packet out to you every 6 to 12 months.

Besides, if they sent out the same packet to you twice a year with the same information you would probably just trash that part of the packet and keep just the declarations pages anyways. Making it a waste of money and a waste of resources.

If you have lost the legal contract part of your car insurance policy that the insurance company did provide you with when you first purchased the policy, your car insurance agent can provide you with a copy of it for your records.