Drivers with the worst credit-based scores pay 1.37x to 2.77x more for identical bodily injury coverage.
July 28, 2026
If you’ve ever wondered why your neighbor pays half what you do for the same car insurance coverage, the answer might have nothing to do with your driving record, and everything to do with your credit score.
A new audit of Illinois auto insurers’ actual rate filings, conducted by O’Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing (ORCAA), found that drivers with the worst credit-based insurance scores can pay anywhere from 1.37 to 2.77 times more for the same bodily injury coverage as drivers with the best scores, even when every other factor, including driving history, stays the same. Property damage coverage showed a similar spread, from 1.31 to 2.04 times more.
The findings come from six major insurers who write policies in Illinois, based on rate plans they’re required to file with state regulators. In other words, this isn’t a survey of driver opinions or a modeled estimate — it’s a direct look at the pricing formulas insurers actually use, and it points to credit as one of the most powerful, and least understood, levers behind your car insurance premium.
Though ORCAA only looked at one state, the pattern it found holds nationally. According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), most states allow insurers to use a credit-based insurance score in setting premiums, alongside other factors like your zip code, the age of your drivers, and your annual mileage. The NAIC is careful to note that a credit-based insurance score is not the same thing as your everyday credit score, even though insurers build it from similar underlying data.
The Illinois Department of Insurance — the same regulator whose rate-filing data ORCAA analyzed — confirms that credit is used as one factor among several in underwriting and pricing, and that consumers have the right to ask their insurer whether a credit-based score played a role in their premium or an adverse decision like a denial or non-renewal.
So the mechanism ORCAA documented in Illinois — credit tiers meaningfully changing what a driver pays for identical coverage, isn’t a local anomaly. It’s a routine, regulator-acknowledged feature of how auto insurance is priced in most of the country, right alongside your driving record and location.
Car insurance premiums aren’t usually calculated as flat prices. Insurers start with a “base rate” for a given coverage, then multiply it by a series of factors tied to specific characteristics, accident history, age, zip code, and, in most states, your credit-based insurance score.
Each factor works like a dial. A driver with a factor of 1.0 pays the base rate. A factor of 1.5 means a 50% markup. According to the rate filings ORCAA reviewed, the gap between the best and worst credit tiers at one insurer stretched a base $100 premium to as little as $82 for top-tier credit and as much as $228 for the bottom tier — on bodily injury coverage alone.
That range varied significantly by company:
Insurer | Bodily Injury Ratio | Property Damage Ratio |
Company A | 2.77x | 2.04x |
Company F | 2.17x | 2.00x |
Company D | 1.78x | 1.61x |
Company B | 1.71x | 1.71x |
Company E | 1.66x | 1.86x |
Company C | 1.37x | 1.31x |
The takeaway: credit-based scoring is nearly universal among the insurers studied, but how much it costs you depends heavily on which company you’re shopping with. That matches what our guide to the cheapest car insurance companies has found: rates for the same driver can swing by hundreds of dollars a year depending on the insurer, which is itself a reason to compare car insurance quotes rather than assume your current insurer offers the best deal for your credit profile.
It’s also worth noting that a credit-based insurance score isn’t the same thing as your regular credit score. Insurers typically weigh payment history and outstanding debt the most — similar to, but not identical to, the FICO tiers lenders use for loans. Checking your insurance quote doesn’t trigger a hard inquiry, so it won’t ding your credit the way applying for a loan would.
It’s worth pausing on this, because the numbers raise an uncomfortable question: should your credit score affect what you pay to drive?
The ORCAA audit was commissioned as part of a state consumer-advocacy effort examining whether pricing factors like credit score, zip code, and age should be allowed at all. Insurers maintain that credit-based scores help them evaluate risk more accurately, and regulators like the NAIC acknowledge that most insurers use them for exactly that reason.
However, consumer advocates counter that the factor isn’t really about driving. A dip in credit score is often tied to a medical bill, a divorce, or a layoff, not a driving decision.
I don’t think credit-based insurance scores indicate how safe of a driver someone is. When I handle motor vehicle claims for people, many times the financial troubles arise from a medical bill, a lost job, or simply life events that are unrelated to driving.
Unlike your accident count or DUI history, your credit is not something you can immediately control, and it’s not clearly related to how safely you handle a car.
That tension is reflected in the guardrails regulators already require: state laws generally prohibit insurers from using a credit-based score as the sole reason to raise a rate or deny, cancel, or decline to renew a policy, and, per the Illinois Department of Insurance, consumers can request to know whether credit played a role in their premium.
That’s a real, live policy debate. As of 2026, only a handful of states — California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Michigan — ban insurers from using credit history in auto pricing altogether. Washington briefly banned the practice through an emergency regulatory rule in 2021, but that rule was overturned in court, and, per the Washington Office of the Insurance Commissioner, credit scoring is legal there again today.
Several other state legislatures have introduced bills in recent years to restrict or eliminate the practice, though most have not passed. Everywhere else, the practical reality for drivers is the same: your score is baked into your premium today, whether or not that feels fair.
If you live in a state where credit-based scoring is legal — which is most of the country — keep these strategies in mind.
If you’re in California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, or Michigan, credit isn’t a factor at all. Everywhere else, assume it’s baked into your quote — and double-check current rules if you live in Washington, where the legal landscape has shifted more than once in the past few years.
The rate filings show some companies have a much smaller gap between their best and worst credit tiers than others. If you have less-than-perfect credit, a company with a 1.3x ratio structure will treat you far more gently than one with a 2.7x ratio, even if their advertised rates look similar on the surface.
Each carrier has its own formula, and some place much more weight on credit than others. I have seen one carrier quote a driver hundreds of dollars more than another for nearly identical coverage.
Play around with different deductibles, remove any extras you don’t use, and check every available discount, including low-mileage, bundling, defensive-driving, and automatic-payment discounts. Do this with multiple insurers to hone in on the best deal.
Coming out of bankruptcy, paying off a collection, or hitting a new score threshold can meaningfully change your tier — but only if you get re-quoted. Insurers don’t always proactively re-rate you when your credit improves, so it pays to check back in.
Generally, moving from a poor credit tier to a fair or good credit tier can result in noticeably lower premiums. Consumers typically see the most meaningful savings when they improve enough to move into a more favorable rating category rather than through small score increases alone.
For the full playbook — bundling, deductibles, usage-based programs, and the specific habits that move a credit-based score fastest — see BestMoney’s guides on does your credit score affect car insurance and 10 ways to lower your car insurance premiums.
Though you can’t typically view your credit-based insurance score the way you can see your FICO score, for example, it’s a good idea to monitor your credit.
Pull your credit reports annually through AnnualCreditReport.com and dispute any accounts or late payments that don’t belong to you, as they can negatively affect your credit-based insurance score.
Credit-based insurance scoring is legal in most states, acknowledged by state regulators as a routine underwriting factor, and — according to this audit of actual filed rate plans — capable of more than doubling your premium compared to a driver with excellent credit, all else being equal.
Whether or not that’s the fairest way to price risk, it’s the system most drivers are working within today. Shopping across insurers, understanding your state’s rules, re-checking your rate after your credit improves, and disputing any credit errors are the most concrete levers available right now.
Anna Baluch is an insurance and finance expert at BestMoney.com. With over a decade of writing experience, she specializes in insurance, banking, mortgages, personal loans, and retirement planning. Her work has been featured in publications like Forbes, Newsweek, Fox Business, Credit Karma, Insurify, and Realtor.com. Anna holds a bachelor’s in marketing from Northwood University and an MBA from Roosevelt University. Her goal is to empower consumers to make smart financial decisions.