Data study · filed with regulators
How Car Insurers Actually Price Driver Age
Updated
We read the rate filings insurers submit to state regulators and pulled the actual driver-age curve — not an estimate. In American Family's Illinois filing, a 16-year-old pays about 3× the bodily-injury rate of a 40-year-old, the curve bottoms out in your 60s, then climbs back up. Every figure below is transcribed from the carrier's own SERFF filing and verified against the source document.
The filed age curve (relative to a 40-year-old)
Each line is one carrier's own filed bodily-injury factor, normalized so a 40-year-old = 1.0×. Illinois and Ohio are steep; Washington is flat by regulation (the state limits how strongly age may be used).
The numbers (SERFF-cited)
| Carrier / State | 16 | 25 | 40 | 66 | 80 | SERFF filing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Family — IL | 3.0× | 1.2× | 1.0× | — | 1.9× | PRCA-134345615 |
| American Family — OH | 3.0× | 1.2× | 1.0× | — | 1.9× | PRCA-134322893 |
| American Family — WA | 2.6× | 1.5× | 1.0× | 1.0× | 1.8× | PRCA-134198065 |
Values are each carrier's own filed bodily-injury age factor, shown as a multiple of that carrier's age-40 factor. "—" = the filing doesn't publish that exact age.
Why you can't just "average" this across carriers
Here's the part almost nobody reports: most carriers don't isolate age at all. American Family publishes a clean per-age table — but others bury age inside class codes, tiers, or household structure, so there's no honest way to line them up side-by-side. That's exactly why a single filed curve is worth more than a vague "average by age":
| Carrier / State | How age shows up | SERFF |
|---|---|---|
| Allstate — TN | Only the fixed-expense (policy-fee) layer — Allstate's main variable-premium age effect is buried in class codes. | ALSX-G127036188 |
| Nationwide — PA | Age is fused with household composition — Nationwide has no standalone driver-age curve here (normalized to prime-age = 1.00). | NWPP-134410938 |
What this means for your rate
The takeaways that hold up across the filings we read:
- The cliff is real and steep. The biggest drops happen in your early 20s — in Illinois the factor roughly halves between 22 and 25.
- "Turning 25" isn't magic — it's a curve. Rates keep easing into your 30s and bottom out around your 60s, then rise again for older drivers.
- Your state caps how much age can matter. Washington flattens the middle-age band entirely; Illinois doesn't.
- Age is only one factor. These are the driver-age multipliers alone — your final premium also depends on your record, vehicle, coverage, and ZIP.
Cite this data
Free to cite and reference with attribution. Every row is a public SERFF filing you can independently verify.
Suggested citation:
FastAutoQuote, “How Car Insurers Price Driver Age,” an analysis of filed SERFF driver-age rating factors. https://fastautoquote.org/how-car-insurers-price-driver-age
Machine-readable data: /api/v1/age-curve.json · Media & data inquiries: press@fastautoquote.org
Related studies: What a ticket or at-fault accident costs · Filed rate changes (2022–2026).
