You might get an insurance lapse letter from the NC DMV. It’s not a scam.

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The NC Department of Motor Vehicles could send you an insurance lapse notification letter, even though your car is up to date. It’s might look like a scam, but it’s not.

There are more than 8 million registered drivers in North Carolina and around 140,000 registered vehicles. Every one is filed into an automated DMV system that keeps track of registrations, licenses and insurance, which is required by law.

Joe Stewart, Chief Advocacy Officer for the Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina, said while the DMV tries to minimize inadvertent notifications like this, “it does happen from time to time.”

Assumed delinquencies for any and all vehicle-related issues within the system are sent out to citizens through the mail from the DMV. Errors in the system can happen for a multitude of reasons such as timing, high data flow and human errors, but the DMV says the individual is responsible for catching and correcting them.

“Most often what happens is someone cancels their insurance before turning in their plates (which is required by law) or people change their insurance and there is a lapse or lag in when the new company notifies us,” Marty Homan, DMV communications director, said in an email.

Current NC DMV commissioner, Paul Tine, is a former insurance agent. DMV personnel and insurance agents work together for system streamlining, Stewart said.

Here’s what to do if you get a DMV lapse notice.

“Don’t delay,” Stewart said. “Do not think ‘well this must be wrong,’ and so do nothing. It’s important if you do get the DMV notice that you take action immediately.”

Delaying can lead to fines, fees to reinstate registration and potential towing/storage if you’re stopped while DMV thinks your car is uninsured.

North Carolina requires proof of liability insurance for registered cars. If you received a notice about a lapse in insurance, you need to call your agent to get them to verify your coverage dates, Stewart says. Your insurance company will make sure that the DMV receives the correct information to update your vehicle’s record in the system.

A physical or electronic record of the policy number, carrier name and vehicle identification number is key in a case of mistaken lapses. Once the DMV’s system shows that you have a lapse in insurance or registration, it will also appear this way to law enforcement.

Stewart warns that in some cases, officers will take the license plate off the car without proper proof of insurance.

“Make sure you have the most recent insurance documentation on the vehicle,” Stewart said. “That information being with you in the vehicle is helpful in a situation where you’ve been stopped by a law enforcement officer who, looking in the DMV system, says it doesn’t appear this vehicle is registered.”

After speaking with your agent, you may also need to call the DMV and provide proof of insurance. It is important to ask what they need to update your record and clear the lapse. Your focus should be on getting the DMV record corrected as quickly as possible.

“Four or five years ago, I was getting two or three calls a week from agents saying this was happening to their customers, but I haven’t gotten that volume of outreach in several years,” Stewart said of recurring errant lapse notices.

In March of this year the DMV announced that they selected Kyndryl’s NCMAX solution to begin modernizing their system after an initial request for proposal the previous August.

“Instead of random sampling a percentage of vehicles at renewal, we recently made a change to now verify all vehicles at renewal. So instead of it possibly taking years for us to catch this, we are now catching all of them at renewal,” Homan said. “This will ensure that we will have clean data when we move to our new modernized system.”

The News & Observer’s Richard Stradling contributed to this story.

This story was originally published July 23, 2026 at 11:16 AM with the headline “You might get an insurance lapse letter from the NC DMV. It’s not a scam..”