Gap Insurance FAQsFAQs
Yes, but it’s much more expensive. The other option, if you’re not getting it through an insurer, is to buy gap insurance through the lender or dealership you bought the car with. Again, this is more expensive than getting it through your main insurance provider as an add-on to your policy.
Yes. If you want to insure the gap between your car’s market value and the amount you owe on it, you’ll need gap insurance. Full coverage won’t cover that gap on its own.
No. More often than not, you’ll need to add gap insurance immediately or soon after buying your new car. For example, Nationwide requires that you buy gap insurance within six months of getting a new car.
Gap Insurance FAQsFAQs
Yes, but it’s much more expensive. The other option, if you’re not getting it through an insurer, is to buy gap insurance through the lender or dealership you bought the car with. Again, this is more expensive than getting it through your main insurance provider as an add-on to your policy.
Yes. If you want to insure the gap between your car’s market value and the amount you owe on it, you’ll need gap insurance. Full coverage won’t cover that gap on its own.
No. More often than not, you’ll need to add gap insurance immediately or soon after buying your new car. For example, Nationwide requires that you buy gap insurance within six months of getting a new car.
Methodology
CNET reviews insurance carriers and products by exhaustively comparing them across set criteria. For auto insurance, we examine average annual premium rates for full coverage, consumer complaints, collision repair scores, the carrier's financial strength, auto claims satisfaction and overall customer satisfaction. Our data comes from a multitude of sources.Â
Auto insurance rates come from Bankrate, which gathers data using Quadrant Information Services. We also use both J.D. Power annual surveys that collect data on customer auto claims satisfaction and overall customer satisfaction.
Consumer complaints are taken from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), which collects consumer complaints across states, indexing complaints on a scale that takes into account the industry average. We collect the financial strength rating of each carrier from the A.M. Best Rating. Lastly, we collected collision repair scores from the Crash Network Insurer Report Card, which collects data from collision repair professionals, including mechanics, to gauge the quality of collision claims service from insurance carriers.
For this gap insurance list, we confirmed with major insurers on the availability of gap insurance and the details of that coverage.
