New York State Insurance Requirements to register a car in your name.

When registering a vehicle in your name, the DMV is going to require a couple of things from you regarding insurance. The New York DMV can be very particular about their insurance requirements. This page is dedicated to the insurance requirements only, for more information about DMV fees, registrant requirements, and other information please see this link.

https://dmv.ny.gov/registration/register-and-title-a-vehicle

So you want to register a car in New York, what kind of insurance are you going to need? The DMV only requires one thing, an ID card with your name on it with the VIN number of the car you are insuring. An ID card shows the DMV that you have New York Compliant liability insurance. The state minimums for liability insurance are $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident, and $10,000 for property damage. If you insure a vehicle with these liability limits or limits that are higher, then the insurance company you work with will provide you an ID card.

An ID card has a couple of key qualities. It will have your name, a bar code, your address, the VIN number of the vehicle, the effective date of the policy, the policy number, The year and make of the vehicle, and the company name, address, and company code.


In order for the insurance ID card to be valid, in New York State the ID card must match your license. The New York DMV is extremely particular about how the ID card appears. This may sound silly or irrelevant, but in order for the DMV to accept your insurance ID card it must be formatted a certain way. If you have a middle name on your license, the insurance ID card must have your full middle name or a middle initial or else the DMV will not accept the ID card for registration. The insurance ID card has a character limit, meaning names may be formatted in a way different to how it appears on your license.

Here are some examples of how an ID card may appear depending on what appears on your license.

Example name: John Smith

If your name is John Smith, the name on the ID card will appear as

Smith, John


Example name: John, C, Smith

If your name appears on your license as John Smith with a middle initial of C, the name on the ID card will appear as

Smith, John, C

Example name: John, Charles, Smith

If you name appears on your license with John Smith and a middle name of Charles, the name on the ID card can appear as either:

Smith, John, C
OR
Smith, John, Charles

At the time of posting this, you do not need the full middle name in order for the insurance ID card to be valid, but with new regulations regarding the REAL ID it is possible it will change to HAVE to include the full middle name.

Example name: Johnathan, Xavier, Smithersonian

If your name appears on your license as Johnathan Xavier Smithersonian, this name may be too long to fit on an ID card. Because of this, the name on the ID card must truncate to something shorter. So it will appear as:

Smithersonian, J, X

Example name: Johnathan Charles, Xavier, Smithersonian

If you have two first names, very often it will be truncated. You do not need two first initials to indicate two first names. It will appear as follows:

Smithersonian, J, X

Example name: Johnathan, Xavier, Jacob Smith

If you have two last names, it is often times case dependent on length. It usually appears as two names, but if it is long enough it may remove the space and combine both names into one singular name. It will always match the license so if your license has the two names combined then the ID card should have both last names combined. In this example it is not long enough to be combined, so it will appear as:

Jacob Smtih, J, X

Example name: Jonathan, Xavier, Jacob-Smith

If you have a hyphenated last name, it will usually include the hyphen in the ID card. But once again to conserve space if the last name gets too long it may combine it as JacobSmith as if it was one word and one last name. In this example it is not long enough to be combined, so it will appear as.

Jacob-Smith, J, X

Example name: Jonathan, Xavier, Jacobson Smithersonian

As mentioned previously, if a last name is too long and two words, they most likely will combine both last names into one singular last name. The name would appear as follows:

JacobsonSmithersonian, J, X

Overall, this should give you an idea of how particular the NY DMV can be about how the name is formatted on the ID card. If it matches whatever it says on your license then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. But remember if your name is longer than the average name you may have your name shortened or formatted in a certain way in order to fit on the insurance ID card.

There is one more factor that goes into the ID card, and it has to do with if you are transferring the license plate from one car to a new car. If you are transferring the registration from one car to another, the ID card will have the word “replacement” on it to indicate that it is replacing another vehicle on the policy and that the registration is being transferred. It is very important that you have the date that the registration is being transferred on it, along with it having the word replacement on it. This most often comes into play when you are trading in a car at a car dealership, but plates can be transferred on any vehicle for a multitude of reasons. Regardless of the reasoning, if you are keeping license plates from one car and putting it on a new car, the ID card must say REPLACEMENT.