Car insurance in Massachusetts

What Massachusetts law requires

To register a car in Massachusetts you must carry an auto policy with four compulsory coverages, as described by the Division of Insurance:

• Bodily Injury to Others — at least $25,000 per person / $50,000 per crash.
• Personal Injury Protection (PIP) — $8,000 per person for medical bills, up to 75% of lost wages and replacement services.
• Bodily Injury Caused by an Uninsured Auto — at least $25,000 per person / $50,000 per crash. Uninsured motorist cover is mandatory here; underinsured motorist cover is not.
• Damage to Someone Else's Property — at least $30,000 per crash.

For policies issued or renewed on or after July 1, 2025, those minimums rose from 20/40/5 to 25/50/30 — the first increase since 1988 (Division of Insurance, Basics of Auto Insurance). If your policy renewed before that date you were still on the old limits until renewal, so it is worth checking your current declarations page.

These are floors, not recommendations. A serious injury or a totalled late-model vehicle can blow through the minimum in a single crash, and anything above the limit is your problem.

Fault, no-fault and how a claim actually runs

Massachusetts uses a modified no-fault system. After a crash, your own PIP pays your medical expenses, a share of lost wages and replacement services first — regardless of who caused it — and it also covers passengers in your car, people you let drive it, household members and pedestrians you strike. You do not wait for a liability investigation to get medical bills moving.

Fault still matters, though, and in three ways:

1. Damage to the other car and anything above PIP. Your Bodily Injury to Others and Property Damage coverages respond when you are the one who caused the harm.
2. Your own car. Collision pays for damage to your vehicle no matter who caused the crash; limited collision pays only in defined circumstances. Comprehensive handles theft, fire, vandalism, animal strikes and non-collision glass breakage.
3. Your premium and your record. Insurers run Merit Rating Plans under the state's Safe Driver Insurance Plan, which lower premiums for incident-free years and raise them after at-fault accidents and certain violations.

Practical sequence: get a police report, notify your insurer promptly, open the PIP claim and submit medical bills and wage documentation, and keep every repair estimate and receipt. The Division of Insurance can review how a company handled your claim, but it cannot decide who was at fault or set the value of your claim — that is for the insurers, an appeal, or a court.

Optional coverage that is usually worth the money

The compulsory package is thin. The Division of Insurance notes that every company must offer these add-ons:

• Increased Bodily Injury to Others ("optional BI"). This is the big one. Compulsory Bodily Injury only applies to crashes in Massachusetts and does not cover injuries to your own passengers. Optional BI raises the limit, covers your passengers, and follows you out of state — essential if you ever drive to New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut or New York.
• Underinsured motorist (UIM). Not required, but it fills the gap when the at-fault driver carries only the state minimum. Note that whatever you collect from the at-fault driver's bodily injury coverage is subtracted from your UIM limit, so buying a UIM limit well above the compulsory minimum is the point.
• Collision and comprehensive. Required by most lenders and lessors anyway; both carry a deductible you choose within the company's rules.
• Substitute transportation (a rental while your car is repaired), towing and labour, roadside assistance, gap/auto loan-lease coverage for a financed car that is totalled, and accident forgiveness.
• Medical payments. Useful as a top-up above PIP, though the regulator points out it may be unnecessary if you already have solid health insurance.

For scale: the NAIC put the 2023 average Massachusetts premium at $1,413 per insured car for liability, collision and comprehensive combined. Your own figure will differ by garaging town, vehicle and record.

Rules Massachusetts drivers trip on

• Your compulsory BI stops at the state line. Out-of-state crashes and your own passengers are only covered if you bought optional bodily injury. Many drivers assume otherwise.
• New licensed driver in the house. If a household member gets a licence, you must tell your insurer within 60 days, and you must list everyone who customarily drives the car.
• Garaging address honesty. Giving false, misleading or incomplete information about where the car is kept or who drives it can let the insurer refuse claims under the optional parts of your policy.
• Pre-insurance inspection on used cars. For a used private passenger vehicle, the insurer may require an inspection before comprehensive applies; the inspection can be deferred ten calendar days (excluding Sundays and legal holidays), and if it is not done in time those coverages are automatically suspended.
• The 30-day switching window. Once you get the renewal invoice showing your actual (not estimated) premium, you have 30 days to move to another company without a transfer penalty; switch later in the year and a penalty may apply, which some new insurers will reimburse.
• Cancelling. Refunds are usually partial, and nothing is paid out until the insurer has proof the plates were cancelled or coverage transferred.
• Can't find a policy? The Massachusetts Auto Insurance Plan (MAIP), the assigned-risk pool, exists so that drivers refused in the voluntary market can still be insured.
• Credit is off-limits. Massachusetts law (M.G.L. c. 175, § 4E) bars insurers from using credit information to issue, renew or rate private passenger auto insurance. Insurers also may not use sex, marital status, race, creed, national origin, religion, age, occupation, income, education or home ownership. Garaging location may be used for rating, but not for deciding whether to insure you (Division of Insurance).

Complaints, surcharge appeals and where to go

Insurance complaints. The Division of Insurance Consumer Service Unit handles disputes with insurers, agents and other licensees. Call 617-521-7794 (Monday–Friday, 8:45am–5:00pm) or file online through the Division's complaint page at mass.gov/how-to/filing-an-insurance-complaint. The office is at 1 Federal Street, Suite 700, Boston.

Before filing, the Division asks that you first contact your agent and the company, send any information they requested, and ask in writing why a claim was not paid.

What the Division can do: check that the company followed your policy terms and Massachusetts insurance law, push the two sides to communicate, require corrective action where the law or policy was breached, and explain your coverage.

What it cannot do: decide who was at fault, decide whose version of events is true, value your claim, give legal or medical advice, or help if you already have an attorney or the matter is in litigation.

Surcharges are a separate track. If you disagree with an at-fault accident determination or a Safe Driver Insurance Plan surcharge, that is appealed to the Board of Appeal under M.G.L. c. 175, § 113P — not through the complaint process. Your driving record from the RMV and the Merit Rating Board's list of surchargeable incidents are the documents to gather first.