How We Research and Label Our Figures

This page explains how QuotePitStop articles are researched, how we label the figures we publish, how we read insurance rate filings, and how we keep pages current.

We start with the primary record wherever one exists: state insurance department releases and filing databases, rate filings themselves, statutes and regulations, court records, federal statistics, and an insurer's own filings or public statements. Where the official record is thin, we use credible news reports and industry research that quote or analyze those records. We do not use anonymous claims, and we do not invent figures, quotes or customer stories. If we cannot source a fact, we leave it out.

Every source an article relies on is listed with its publisher, a link and the date we checked it.

Each article ends with a section called "About these figures", which lists every cited source with one of four labels:

• Official record: a regulator, statute, court, government statistic, or a company's own filing.
• Reported: a credible news or industry report that relies on records like those above.
• Estimate: our own arithmetic from sourced inputs. When we use one, we show the inputs.
• Directional: a trend or an expert view with no hard number behind it.

We describe a filing with the word the source uses. A filing that has been filed has been submitted to the regulator; a requested change is what the company asked for; an approved change is one a regulator signed off on, where the state requires approval. A request is not an approval, and states review filings in different ways.

The percentage on a filing is an average across the company's existing policyholders for that product and state. It is not a forecast of any one person's bill, and we never present it as one. We also name the legal company that filed, not only the brand, because one brand often files through several companies.

Pages are rechecked when a source they rely on changes, for example when a regulator publishes a new filing decision or a statistic is revised, and as a policy every article is reviewed at least every six months. Pages about a specific insurer or state carry a "facts checked" date showing when those facts were last confirmed.

When we find or are told about an error, we correct it and record the correction on our corrections page. You can reach us through the contact page.