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I live in the US (Illinois).

If I have 2 cars, and:

For car #1, insurance company "A" has a better rate, and for car #2, insurance company "B" has a better rate.

Assuming the difference in rates is more than the multi-car discount of either insurance company, it might be cheaper to insure each car with a different insurance company.

Some time ago, I had heard that this was not allowed... that you had to use the same insurance company for all your vehicles. But, I don't remember where I had heard that, or if it was accurate, or if it might apply to Illinois, or not.

Is it legal to insure each car with a different insurance company?

To be clear, I am not talking about "Double insuring" a vehicle, and I'm not talking about splitting liability and collision/comprehensive coverage on the same vehicle between 2 different insurance companies... 2 cars, 2 insurance policies, one insurance policy with full coverage (liability and collision/comprehensive) for each car.

Also, the question is not about whether or not an insurance company might not like you to do this, or whether doing it might be problematic. The question is, is it legal to do it. In other words, are there any laws or regulations that would prohibit this.

And to further clarify, that could be laws or regulations preventing an insurance company from this, or laws or regulations preventing a person from obtaining insurance this way.

Kevin Fegan
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Look at companies such as Haggerty that insure only classic and low mileage cars. They have no issue giving full coverage on your classic car while at the same time you keep your daily driver with another company.

Since this is the business model of an entire group of companies that specialize in specialty vehicles, I would think it would be legal.

Peter
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There are no laws against what you are proposing.

However, you might find in practice that it is impossible: I.e., no insurer will sell insurance on one car knowing that your "household" owns and drives another car that they do not insure. There might be some adverse selection argument for this sort of policy, but that's something for the insurer to explain.

Note that there are laws (like fraud, and sometimes insurance-specific statutes) against knowingly misrepresenting risks to a contractual counterparty like an insurer, so if as a condition of selling you insurance they require you to disclose all vehicles and drivers in your household it could be illegal to not provide full disclosure.

feetwet
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Insurance companies can definitely insure a single vehicle, what they don’t do is insure a single driver — if you have someone in your household who you are authorizing to drive your vehicle on a regular basis, they will want to know about it. If you don’t tell them, in the case of an accident they may disallow your claim.

jmoreno
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