The Insurance Center now provides direct links to the premier online rate quote and purchasing services of Intuit's Quicken InsureMarket, along with InsureMarket's robust interactive planning tools. The Insurance Center offers members useful, straightforward information about life, auto, home, small business, long term care and disability insurance. Members can research insurance, calculate their coverage needs, and get help finding the best prices available for them. In the Auto Insurance area, members can find statistics on the likelihood of car theft for different makes of cars and the safety rating of different cars.

To help members find the best insurance rates available, AOL's Insurance Center now features Quicken InsureMarket's capability to supply real-time rate quotes for term life insurance from up to seven providers. Available now in ten states, and on a nationwide basis later this year, the Insurance Center's auto service offers a complete purchasing service where AOL members can be approved for coverage while online and make payment, with coverage commencing as soon as after the following business day.

Travelers Property & Casualty, through Travelers Indemnity and its affiliates, is the first carrier to introduce auto coverage through the Quicken InsureMarket service and on the AOL Insurance Center. Two other companies have also announced plans to begin offering auto insurance through the service later this year, InsureDirect and Electric Insurance Company. The companies supplying real-time rate quotes for term life insurance are: John Hancock Financial Services, Lincoln Benefit Life, Prudential Insurance, Ohio National Financial Services, Travelers Life & Annuity, Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Company and Zurich Direct. The Allstate Insurance Company, MetLife and State Farm Insurance also offer the ability to contact local insurance agents through their presence in the Insurance Center.

"The new Insurance Center provides the latest example of the ways in which the alliance between AOL and Intuit is bringing powerful content to our members and new, state-of-the-art access to online financial services, such as insurance," said Rob Shenk, Director of Programming for AOL's Personal Finance Channel.

"We're pleased that Quicken InsureMarket can enhance the range of financial planning resources AOL provides for its members, and that this large audience of online users will have direct access to a new and convenient way to manage their insurance needs," says Steven Aldrich, president of Intuit Insurance Services, Inc. (IIS).

AOL and Intuit announced a three-year agreement in February under which Intuit became a primary source of financial content and programming for AOL and its Internet site, AOL.COM. When fully implemented, the alliance will also provide AOL members with access to interactive tools, expert advice and online financial services in areas such as home mortgages, online tax preparation and services for small business.

The Personal Finance Channel is one of the most popular and rapidly growing areas on AOL, and is the leading financial destination in cyberspace. It provides 75 million stock quotes per day, maintains over 6 million active investment portfolios and generates 13 million financial graphs per month for AOL users. The Channel also offers access to financial information from popular sources such as Bloomberg, Business Week, Hoovers, Disclosure, Morningstar, Reuters, Investor's Business Daily, TheStreet.com, the Motley Fool and Sage.