How The General Rates Auto Insurance

How we read The General's filing

Everything here traces to Permanent General Assurance Corporation's Virginia private-passenger auto rate pages (SERFF filing PGAC-134300891), on file with the Virginia Bureau of Insurance through the SERFF filing system, with rates effective January 1, 2025. A filed rate manual is the document a carrier must submit and justify to the regulator before it can charge a premium, so these are the numbers The General actually filed. As the Insurance Information Institute explains, a premium is a base rate multiplied by a chain of filed factors; the limit factors below are one link in that chain - the one that prices how much coverage you buy.

Bodily-injury limits: the core trade-off

Bodily-injury liability is the coverage that pays for injuries you cause to others, and it is where limit choice matters most. In The General's Virginia filing, the factors climb steadily: 50/100 applies a 1.26 factor, 100/200 a 1.55 factor, and 100/300 a 1.60 factor relative to the lowest filed limit. The jump from the floor to 50/100 (a 1.26 factor) is the largest single step; from there, doubling your per-person and per-accident protection to 100/300 costs comparatively little more (1.55 to 1.60).

That shape is the practical argument for not defaulting to the bare minimum. Bodily-injury claims - medical bills, lost wages, and legal costs for people you injure - are the ones that can run into six figures and expose your assets if your limits run out. The General's filed factors show that once you have stepped up from the floor, buying substantially more bodily-injury protection is relatively cheap, which is why raising these limits is one of the highest-value moves a budget-conscious driver can make.

Uninsured-motorist coverage is the steepest

The single steepest limit factor in The General's Virginia filing is on uninsured-motorist bodily injury: a 1.40 factor at 50/100 rising to a 2.10 factor at 100/300 - the highest multiplier on the sheet. Uninsured/underinsured-motorist coverage pays your own injuries when an at-fault driver has no insurance or too little, and its property-damage companion (UMPD) carries a 1.25 factor at $50,000. The steep pricing is not the carrier penalizing you - it reflects the real cost of a coverage that stands in for the protection a negligent, uninsured driver failed to buy.

That 2.10 factor is worth dwelling on for a nonstandard carrier's book specifically. Drivers who shop nonstandard insurers are more likely to share the road with other minimally- or un-insured drivers, so uninsured-motorist coverage is arguably where the protection matters most - and the filed factor shows it is priced closest to its true value. For a driver weighing where the next premium dollar does the most good, The General's own factors point here rather than to a marginally higher property-damage limit.

Why limits matter more for nonstandard drivers

Limit choice carries extra weight for the drivers The General serves. Nonstandard policyholders - those with tickets, at-fault accidents, or prior lapses - are statistically more likely to be involved in future claims, and they are also more likely to share the road with other minimally- or uninsured drivers. Both facts argue against defaulting to the state minimum. If you are more likely to have an at-fault crash, the bodily-injury and property-damage limits that pay for the other party's losses are the ones standing between a claim and your personal assets; and if you are more likely to be hit by an uninsured driver, the uninsured-motorist coverage that pays your own injuries is the one that matters most.

The tension, of course, is budget: nonstandard premiums are already higher because of the driver-class and surcharge factors, so every added dollar is felt. That is exactly why the filed limit factors are worth reading rather than guessing. They show that the most valuable increases - stepping bodily injury up off the floor, and carrying real uninsured-motorist protection - are affordable relative to the protection they add, while property-damage limits cost almost nothing to raise. For a higher-risk driver watching every dollar, the filing is a map of where limited premium buys the most protection, and where the minimum leaves the biggest gaps.

What this means when you shop

The General's Virginia filing shows exactly what it costs to buy more protection - the coverage-limit factors that a single quote hides inside the bottom-line number. None of these factors is unique to The General, but seeing the real multipliers lets you predict how raising a limit moves your price and gives you a real yardstick against another carrier's filing. The pattern points to the same conclusion for most drivers: step off the state minimum, raise bodily-injury and uninsured-motorist limits where the protection is greatest, and add cheap property-damage limit for little money. If you are shopping The General because standard carriers have been expensive or unavailable, compare its filed rates against other nonstandard insurers with identical limits, since each files its own factors and the same profile can land very differently.