So say you insure your car for $80,000, but in reality it's only worth $20,000. Hagarty will allow you to insure it for $80,000, but when a total loss is deemed after an accident, Hagarty will not pay the $80,000 to you. They'll only pay within a median range of what the car is worth. They've gotten caught up in court several times regarding this, and every time they've lost and had to pay the full amount of the policy. For insurance use J.C. Taylor or Grundy."
My experience was solely related to Michigan which is, of the 50 United States and its territories, completely different than than the rest, in so many ways...
When I first went to get collector car insurance back in the year 2000 for my Pagoda, the ONLY company I could get insurance from was Hagerty. That's because they--being based in Michigan--understood that vast numbers of Michigan residents including most management at all the auto companies (way beyond the big three) didn't own cars. That's right; we had (in my case through my Ford-employed wife) management lease vehicles which were either self-insured by the car company, or insured by an insurance company hired by the auto company. So, for well over 10 years at that time we had not owned or insured a car in our name. (N.B. For those wont to snarky comments, we paid plenty for the car leases, they were not free. They were discounted of course, but still cost plenty.)
That poses a problem when collector car insurance mandates
proof of other insurance and a car for use as a daily driver. None of the others I checked at that time could wrap their heads around this management lease concept, but Hagerty could. We needed to get a letter from HR deeming we had management lease vehicles available to us.
Now, fast forward to 2019. Our insurance, even with Hagerty kept going up, up and up. That's even AFTER we got a reduction with a partial waiver of the MCCA* assessment when I moved my registration to "Historical". So, I went shopping around (this time, we owned cars as my wife retired) and Grundy was clearly a winner in the rate category. I have agreed value with them too. I don't know how this all works but Grundy, like Hagerty, appears to be an agent, not an insurer. I don't recall the name of the insurance agency on the Hagerty policy but it wasn't Hagerty. On the Grundy policy its the Philadelphia Insurance Company, or PHLY.
Another factor that one should worry about is the companies that require an appraisal. That could easily cost well into the hundreds of dollars, and negate any insurance savings. That made me reject some carriers.
It's no surprise that ANY insurance agent or carrier would lose an "agreed value" argument in court; you are paying a rate based upon that agreed upon value. It's not as if you paid for a $20,000 value, and are claiming $80,000 at time of claim; your rate was based in a large part upon the agreed value. I do know that some insurance companies will target certain owners/cars when there is suddenly a large jump in value. Maybe you restored the car? They'll want some proof of that value change.
Because of the Covid crisis, the local DMVs are closed and re-locating the Pagoda's registration, title and insurance from my old state of Michigan to North Carolina will just have to wait until I can do this without issue. We managed to get our daily drivers switched as priority one, once we had an address, driver's licenses, and just before the *&^% hit the fan with the virus. Our regular daily driver insurance dropped by well over 50% in the move here.
*MCCA Assessment: this is a flat fee assessed onto each auto insurance policy in the state of Michigan to fund the "Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association, a quasi-public entity that takes over when injuries exhaust the primary insurance. Michigan is the only state/territory that has completely unlimited payments for catastrophic injuries with no cap. Current MCCA assessment per vehicle is $220.00 per year per policy. For collector policies it's $44.00
