How this site earns, and what that changes

We would rather explain how we are paid than have you wonder about it. The short version: an insurance company may pay us when a request from this site results in a policy. You never pay us, and that payment is not added to your premium.

1. What we are, and are not

Insurance Plan Center is an independent comparison and referral service. We are not an insurance company, we do not underwrite, and we do not own or manage an insurer. No company whose products appear here wrote this site, reviewed this site, or approves of it.

Every policy you end up with is written by an insurance company licensed in the state where the risk sits, and that company answers to that state's insurance department, not to us.

2. Where the money comes from

When a policy is placed through a request you sent us, the insurer may pay a commission. That is a payment between the insurer and us. It does not appear on your quote, it is not built into your price, and paying us nothing would not make your policy cheaper.

We do not charge consumers a fee for advice, for comparison, or for a call. We do not accept payment to rank a company more highly, and we do not accept money to remove a negative observation about a policy.

Commissions do vary between companies and between lines of business. That variation is real, and section four explains what we do about it.

3. What we do not publish

We do not publish a directory of "partner" insurers, because a list of friendly names reads as a recommendation whether we intend it as one or not. If a company has quoted from a request that came through us, it can appear in your comparison with its name attached. If it has not, it does not appear at all.

4. Where a commission could influence what you see

Being honest about money means admitting where it might lean. A higher commission can make a line of business more attractive to us to promote, and it can affect the order in which options are presented to you. Our answer is procedural rather than a promise to be impartial by nature:

• Every option shown to you comes with the name of the company that produced it
• Exclusions and limits are described the same way regardless of who wrote the policy
• If a policy is a poor fit, we say so, including when the poor fit is with something we would earn from
• Nothing on this site is a paid placement, and no company can buy a mention here

If you ever feel a recommendation was steered rather than explained, tell us. We would rather investigate a complaint than defend a placement.

5. Prices you see, and prices you pay

We do not publish example prices, because a figure quoted on a web page is either out of date or invented. The prices we pass to you come from the company that would write the policy, calculated on the details you gave us. The final figure is set by that company at the moment it issues the policy.

6. Naming and endorsement

Insurance company names, logos, and trade marks belong to their owners. They appear here to identify who wrote a policy, and nothing more. No company has endorsed this site, reviewed it, or approved any statement on it, and no company may pay to be mentioned.

7. What you should still do

Read the policy document before you rely on it, ask us about anything that reads unclearly, and check the insurer's status with your own state insurance department. Our licensing page explains how to run that check, and our records page explains how to read a rating and a complaint ratio without being impressed by them.

8. Questions about this disclosure

If anything here is unclear, or if it does not match what you have been told by someone else, we would like to hear about it: