Fee in Florida budget may boost car insurance costs

A fee increase tucked into the state budget has Florida insurers in a tizzy. And it could boost car insurance costs for consumers.

The state budget -- which legislators will vote on today -- would increase certain Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles fees by more than three-fold. The fees are for drivers' history and crash records, which insurers pull for every driver in a prospective customer's household.

"This is how we find out if someone has a revoked license, DUI, several speeding tickets, etc.," Allstate spokesman Nick Halliwell said in an e-mail. The higher fees have "the potential to further increase our costs of doing business."

Those costs ultimately get passed to customers across the country, Halliwell said.

The records are also used to estimate insurance policy costs so the move may deter some insurers from providing quotes by phone, which restricts customers shopping around for policies, said William Stander, assistant vice president of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.