Handling Insurance in a Language You Are Comfortable In

Insurance is difficult vocabulary in any language. Doing it in a second language, on the phone, under time pressure, is harder still. Here is what is genuinely available and how to use it, without pretending there are protections that do not exist.

The state agency side

The California Department of Insurance is a state agency, and state agencies are covered by the Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act. Government Code section 7292 requires every state agency directly involved in furnishing information or rendering services to the public, where contact is made with a substantial number of non-English-speaking people, to employ a sufficient number of qualified bilingual persons in public contact positions so that information and services can be provided in the language of the non-English-speaking person.

In practice this means the department's consumer hotline at 1-800-927-4357 and the material at insurance.ca.gov, which includes a Spanish-language section for consumers. If you need help from the state, you do not have to arrange your own translation to ask for it.

The insurance company side

Private carriers are not state agencies, and what each company offers differs a great deal: bilingual service lines, translated documents, telephone interpreters, or none of those. This is a fair question to ask before you choose a company, and it belongs in the same conversation as the price. Ask directly: can I talk to this company in Spanish, and will I receive documents I can read?

Bring your own interpreter, and choose them well

You can always have a family member or friend on the call with you, and there is nothing irregular about it. One caution worth stating: a bilingual relative is interpreting a conversation, not making decisions for you. Make sure the answers being given are the ones you actually want given, particularly about who lives in the household and who drives the car, since those answers shape the whole policy.

Ask for it in writing

This is the strongest single move available to you and it costs nothing. Ask for the declarations page, the quote breakdown and any form you are asked to sign to be sent to you in writing before you commit. Written documents can be read slowly, translated, and shown to somebody else. A verbal explanation on a phone call cannot.

Be especially careful about anything described as a waiver or a rejection. Insurance Code section 11580.2 lets uninsured motorist coverage be deleted only by written agreement, which is exactly the kind of document you should never sign from a spoken summary.

What we do

Spanish is an everyday language on the phone in our office, and we would rather spend an extra ten minutes on a call than have somebody buy a policy they did not fully follow. If a term does not make sense, ask us to say it again a different way. That request is welcome, not a nuisance.

Five words worth learning in English

These five carry most of the meaning in an insurance conversation, and knowing them in English makes every call shorter:

• Premium — what you pay for the policy.
• Limit — the maximum the company will pay for a covered loss.
• Deductible — what you pay yourself before the company pays.
• Liability — coverage for harm you cause to other people.
• Endorsement — a change attached to the policy, including an exclusion.

If someone uses a term outside this list and does not explain it, ask them to. That request is entirely reasonable and it is not a sign of anything except paying attention.

Start the quote in whichever language you prefer and tell us which one you want the follow-up in.