Car insurance prices are increasing across the U.S., with Minnesota seeing the sharpest spike from last summer. 

According to Insurify, one of the largest online insurance shopping networks, the nation could see a 22% increase by the end of the year, while Minnesota’s increase could be as high as 61%.

One of the main reasons for the spike was severe weather — specifically, a storm that produced large hail on Aug. 11, 2023.

“[The storm had] golf ball to baseball-sized hail to essentially rain havoc all over the [area], causing nearly $2 billion in damages alone,” Chase Gardner, data insights manager with Insurify, said about the storm last summer. 

Another factor Gardner says is leading to pricier premiums is car insurance fraud becoming more common. 

“We’ve seen some pretty dramatic results over the past six and 18 months,” Gardner added. 

According to Insurify, the average cost for a Minnesotan to have full coverage on their car in June of 2023 was $1,492; last month, that figure jumped to an average of $2,315.

Because of that, local insurance brokers are busier than normal. 

“We’re hearing from a lot of consumers out there that are just shopping around,” Aaron Sorenson, executive vice president with Insurance Brokers of Minnesota, said. 

Sorenson said that people driving faster also plays a role in the higher prices, adding that due to the higher speeds, crashes have been more severe and expensive. 

“They’ve been with one of the big carriers, the captive markets, for a number of years, and they’re just kind of tired of getting those rate increases over and over,” Sorenson said of his clients. 

Knowing the markets well, Sorenson says sometimes they’ll move their clients to the more ‘ma and pop’ kind of operations that may not be as widely known. 

“They just might not have that ‘duck’ or ‘flo’ out on the TV as much, [but] they take some of that saving, advertising savings and put it into their rates,” Sorenson said.