That's a really interesting question. Just for clarity, when you say "talk to an agent" I am assuming you mean talking to an agent at Progressive. Right? You are not at this point talking about shopping for quotes at other places -- you just want to see if your existing insurer might give you a better rate.
Another way to ask your question is: How often does one's current auto insurer pull your credit? Do they do it every six months (i.e. when they give you a new quote)? Is the answer that this varies widely from insurer to insurer? (State Farm might only check once, Geico checks every time, etc.)
One thing you may want to be aware of is that few auto insurers actually pull your FICO score. Instead they rely on a score that was created for the auto insurance industry. This scoring model is based solely on your credit report, but it has different factors and concerns than does FICO. (Some of the concerns are the same -- in both models for example, late payments are bad, collections are bad, high CC utilization is bad, etc.)
There are two main scoring models that are used. One is an auto insurance score made by TransUnion. The other is an auto insurance score made by Lexis Nexis. The TU score is free via Credit Karma. It is squirreled away in an obscure portion of their site but you can get it.
The LN score costs you money each time you ask for it and you have to go through LN.
If I were you I would start by taking a look at the free score via Karma. Just remember it is not the big TU score that you see as soon as you sign in. You have to navigate to the right place.
Contributor Thomas Thumb knows a lot about the auto insurance scores. Hopefully he'll see your post and will tell you more if you like.
