OTTO Insurance Review [2024]: Is It Legit?

If you are wanting to compare several different insurance quotes in one spot, lead generators like OTTO can help. However, it is important to note that lead generators have some disadvantages. Quotes might be less personalized and might not give you the most accurate pricing for your insurance needs. Additionally, sharing your information with multiple providers may lead to unsolicited contacts or marketing communications.

One of the top ways to save money on any insurance, especially auto insurance, is to compare multiple quotes. This can be quite time consuming, which makes comparison sites like OTTO helpful. They streamline the process by providing access to a variety of quotes from different providers in one convenient location. However, it's important to carefully review each quote for coverage details and keep in mind that sharing your information may lead to follow-up contacts from multiple insurers.

OTTO is a lead generator, meaning once you provide your information, OTTO shares it with its marketing partners. Its partners include major insurance providers such as Progressive, Geico, State Farm, and Allstate. Its partner list also includes regional carriers and other marketing companies.

In other words, if you submit an online request for a quote, you may receive a lot of phone calls, texts, and emails. Getting multiple quotes could be helpful for finding the best rate on auto insurance, but OTTO may not be the best option for doing so.

>>See our top auto insurance picks for November 2024

How we evaluate products

FinanceBuzz researches a number of factors in each auto insurance provider to create our reviews. These factors include cost and discounts, complaints and customer satisfaction, coverage, and ease of use. We also gather information from sources such as J.D. Power, AM Best, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), and the Better Business Bureau to ensure we provide the most useful information to our readers

OTTO Insurance pros and cons

OTTO Insurance: Is it worth it?

If you are new to comparing insurance quotes, OTTO could be a great place to start. They make it fast and easy to get in touch with several companies. However, when I tried out the platform myself, I was matched to a few insurance companies that I have never heard of, including Provide Car Insurance, which is either out of business or not available in my area.

This is the risk with using a lead generator when shopping insurance quotes. You may receive matches with lesser-known companies because these affiliates offer more advantageous payouts to the referring platform. With any platform like OTTO, it's crucial to conduct your own research on each matched provider, verify their legitimacy, and ensure they offer the coverage you need.

What is OTTO Insurance?

On the OTTO Insurance website, the company claims to help you get car insurance rates in seconds for free. The company works with an extensive network of nationwide carriers, regional carriers, and individual agents to get you the best car insurance premiums available.

Using OTTO is simple. To receive an auto insurance quote, you will need to enter in information about your vehicle, credit score, and personal contact information. While this information might fetch you an initial quote, insurance companies will also do a deep dive into your driving history before offering an accurate quote.

Is OTTO Insurance legit?

While OTTO is a legitimate company, it is not an insurance company. It is a lead generation site that connects consumers with insurance agencies and carriers. The company says that it provides auto insurance rates along with quotes for pet, home, and life insurance. It is headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida.

There isn’t much information available regarding when OTTO Insurance Group was founded. According to Crunchbase, the company’s owner and CEO is Joshua Keller. Keller’s LinkedIn profile shows that he is an entrepreneur responsible for establishing several companies, including Union Square Media Group, the parent company of OTTO Insurance.

When I requested a quote from OTTO, the process was easy. OTTO did not ask anything too personal — just a phone number and home address. However, when they matched me to a company, I did not get a quote like I initially thought I was going to. Instead, I was directed to Root Car Insurance’s site to fill out a quote form again.

This time, the questions were a little more personal, like what my driver’s license number and vehicle identification number (VIN) was. I did not feel comfortable putting that in, especially since big auto insurance companies like Allstate do not ask for this info in order to provide a quote. Once you choose an insurance company, you will need to provide that info so they can do a full exam of your driving record, but for pulling quotes, it does seem too invasive.

Compare this experience to getting a quote from Allstate. I needed to provide my car details and answer general questions about my driving record, but they did not even require me to give them an email address for the quote. After a few minutes, I was able to get a thorough quote like this:

In the end, using OTTO felt like a waste of time since you get one match at a time, and it is not necessarily a match based on savings. One time when I refreshed my search, I was matched with Experian — another auto insurance lead generator.

It would be more beneficial for me to access quotes directly from insurance companies. In my experience, it is easier to remove your name from mailing lists from bigger, well-known companies versus lead generators.

Because OTTO Insurance isn’t an insurance company, it doesn’t have a financial strength rating from AM Best. It also doesn’t appear on J.D. Power’s rankings of auto insurance companies for the same reason. Nor does it have a current Better Business Bureau profile.

If you go through the OTTO quote process, be prepared for a lot of phone calls. Most negative customer reviews for OTTO Insurance online are about consumers getting multiple calls, emails, and texts after applying for a quote on the OTTO Insurance website.

	OTTO Insurance
Year founded	Unknown
Types of coverage	Unknown
Discounts available	Unknown
Where you can use it	Online website
Customer support	(888) 312-8867; info@OTTOinsurance.com
Availability	All 50 U.S. states

What insurance does OTTO Insurance offer?

Since OTTO Insurance isn’t actually an insurance company, it doesn’t offer insurance coverage products. However, the company claims to work with over 1,000 affiliate insurance companies that offer different types of car insurance coverage, such as:

• Liability coverage: Most states require all drivers carry a minimum level of bodily injury liability and property damage liability that will help to cover injuries and damage to another driver if you are in an accident and found to be at fault.
• Collision: This assists in covering damage to your vehicle if you are in an accident with another car or an object like a fence or light post. Collision insurance helps to pay to repair or replace your vehicle regardless of who was at fault for the accident.
• Comprehensive: This coverage helps to pay to repair or replace your car if it is damaged by something other than a collision. Covered incidents could be vandalism, fire, water damage, theft, and accidents with animals like deer.
• Personal injury protection (PIP): If you are in an accident, PIP insurance helps to cover your medical expenses, lost wages, or funeral expenses, regardless of who was at fault.
• Uninsured/underinsured motorist: This coverage helps to protect you if you are in an accident with someone who has no or little car insurance.
• Medical expense: This coverage is a backup to your health insurance coverage to help cover your medical bills if you get in an accident.
• Guaranteed Auto Protection (GAP) insurance: If you are still financing your car and get into an accident, this coverage pays the difference between the current value of the car and the original amount of your car loan.
• Rental reimbursement: When your car is damaged in an accident, this coverage will reimburse you up to the policy maximum if you need to rent a car while yours is being repaired.
• Roadside assistance and towing: This coverage is helpful if your car battery dies, you get a flat tire, or you lock your keys in the car.
• Non-owner insurance: This covers any property damage or injuries you cause when driving a car you don’t own, like a rental car or if you borrow a friend's car.

The OTTO Insurance website also enables you to get quotes on other types of insurance:

• Pet insurance
• Home insurance
• Life insurance

Although bundling is not available on the site, it may be available with the partner insurance company that OTTO Insurance recommends. During the quote process, you’ll be asked if you are interested in bundling your car insurance with your home or renter’s insurance. Your answer may factor into the insurance carrier OTTO recommends to you.

OTTO Insurance: How cheap is it?

The OTTO website says you can save $500+ a year on car insurance, but this is hard to validate because you are never quoted a price when you go through the quote process. Instead, you are redirected to the website of a recommended insurance company where you have to fill out more information, some duplicated from OTTO, to get an actual quoted price.

How to find discounts

Regardless of whether you’re getting a quote through OTTO or another company, one of the best ways to save money on your car insurance plan is to ask about the possible discounts.

Available auto insurance discounts could include:

• Automatic payments: Many insurers will give you a discount on your car insurance premiums if you set up automatic payments from your checking account or credit card.
• Defensive driving: You could get this discount by taking a certified defensive driving course.
• Distant student: You may qualify for this discount if you have a full-time student who isn’t using your car while they are away at college.
• Good student: Many insurers offer discounts for full-time students who maintain a B or higher grade average at school.
• Homeowners: You may be eligible for a discount just for owning a home, regardless if your homeowner's insurance is with the same insurer.
• Multi-car: You could save money if you have several vehicles that you need to insure and you put them on the same policy.
• Multi-policy: You could get a discount by bundling your car insurance with other insurance policies such as your homeowner's or renter's insurance.
• Pay in full: Your premiums may cost less if you pay upfront for six months to a year rather than pay monthly.
• Safe driver: If you haven’t had any traffic tickets or accidents in the past three years, you may qualify for a safe driver discount. Some insurers also provide discounts for drivers who use a special device or mobile app that monitors their driving habits.

How to maximize savings

There are several things you can do to maximize your savings on car insurance. To get a better policy premium, you could:

Improve your credit score

Your credit score could impact how much you have to pay for car insurance. Insurance companies consider drivers with low credit scores at a higher risk of filing a claim. There are only three states – California, Hawaii, and Massachusetts – that prohibit insurers from using your credit score as a factor in determining your rate. If you live anywhere else, you may want to strive for a credit score of 700 or higher to save money on car insurance.

Drive a different car

The type of car you drive also impacts how much you’ll be charged for car insurance. That Tesla might impress your friends, but it’ll cost you more for insurance than a run-of-the-mill sedan. High-priced cars like a Porsche, BMW, or Lexus may cost more to insure because they are more likely to get stolen.

You could also save money on car insurance by driving an older car or one that is equipped with safety features like airbags and anti-lock brakes.

If you have more than one driver on the plan, consider switching which driver drives which car. This tip came directly from my insurance agent who played with the driver scenarios for my husband and I to see which changes resulted in the lowest insurance cost. Simply switching my husband and my name on which car we said was our main driver saved us $20 per bill — $120 a year.

Maintain a clean driving record

The fewer traffic citations and accidents you have, the better when it comes to getting low-cost car insurance. Insurance companies consider drivers who have many tickets or claims a higher risk, which means those drivers have to pay higher premiums. Car insurance premiums typically increase by about 49% after an accident.

Shop around

Insurance companies charge significantly different rates for the same level of coverage on car insurance. So it’s important to shop around and compare quotes from different insurance companies. This is where OTTO Insurance may come in handy.

How to get an insurance quote from OTTO Insurance

Want to try OTTO out for yourself? Here’s how the process works:

Fill out their form

You will start the quote process by choosing which type of insurance quote you want and entering your zipcode. The platform will then ask you detailed questions regarding the type of insurance you are shopping for. If you are shopping for car insurance, you will be asked the following:

• Your vehicle’s year, make, model, and trim
• If you want to add a second vehicle
• If you've had auto insurance in the past 30 days
• Who currently handles your car insurance
• Your gender
• Your marital status
• Your credit score
• Whether you own or rent your home
• If you'd like to receive renters/homeowners insurance policy quotes (for bundling options)
• Your birthdate
• The number of drivers in your home
• Your name
• Your email
• Your address
• Your phone number

Receive your quotes

After finishing the process and entering all your information, the website will take a minute to think and then declare a “winner” insurance company that best fits your needs. However, the system doesn’t provide any details on rates. Instead, it just provides you with a link to the recommended insurance company’s website, where you will have to enter all the same information you just did to get an actual quote for car insurance premiums.

In other words, it’s not a quote comparison tool where you get several quotes at once. Instead, you are contacted by insurance and marketing companies and get the quotes from each company.

Select a policy

OTTO only matches you to one company at a time, and you will need to enter your data again with that company to get a real quote. This makes it hard to compare policies side by side. When you do get a quote, it’s important to get a detailed breakdown of what each policy covers so when you do compare it to another quote, you are comparing the same type of policies.

OTTO Insurance FAQs

Bottom line

If you’re shopping around for car insurance, it’s probably better for you to do your own research rather than use a lead generation website like OTTO Insurance. The OTTO Insurance quote process results only provided us with one insurance carrier recommendation and the system didn’t show any premium rates for us to compare. Instead, we were just redirected to the insurer’s website, where we would have had to re-enter all our information.

Another downside to using a lead generation site like OTTO Insurance is that the site shares your information, and you may receive numerous calls, emails, and texts from companies.

For a better experience, consider using our list of the best car insurance companies.