Auto-Owners ranked third for home insurance in Insure.com’s 2024 Best Insurance Companies survey, with low rates helping the company climb into the top three.
Leslie Kasperowicz is an insurance educator and content creation professional with nearly two decades of experience first directly in the insurance industry at Farmers Insurance and then as a writer, researcher, and educator for insurance shoppers writing for sites like ExpertInsuranceReviews.com and InsuranceHotline.com and managing content, now at Insurance.com.
John is the editorial director for CarInsurance.com, Insurance.com and Insure.com. Before joining QuinStreet, John was a deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal and had been an editor and reporter at a number of other media outlets where he covered insurance, personal finance, and technology.
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Auto-Owners holds its own against much larger insurers in terms of service. In fact, it landed at the No. 3 spot, scoring above insurance giant State Farm, on the 2024 Best home Insurance Companies list. Customers scored the company well for ease of service, and it has a low complaint ratio.
Bucking the current trend toward all-digital service, Auto-Owners doesn’t offer quotes online and stands behind its decision to quote home insurance only through agents. That’s a downside for those who prefer to be able to shop for insurance without having to speak to anyone directly.
However, Auto-Owners has developed a solid reputation and has an A++ rating with AM Best. For those who like personal service, it’s a good pick.
AM Best's Financial Strength Rating is an independent opinion of an insurer's financial strength and ability to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contract obligations.
Below is Insure.com’s review of the company. It’s based on third-party metrics, including two J.D. Power studies (Home Insurance Study and Property Claims Satisfaction Study) and an in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here.
The average home insurance rate is $2,604; Auto-Owners is well below that, although Allstate has lower rates.
Auto-Owners didn’t have the highest score for customer service in our survey, with 67% of customers saying they’re satisfied. Erie won this category at 89%.
Auto-Owners fared better in J.D. Power’s 2024 Home Insurance Study, which rates companies for overall customer satisfaction, with a score well above the 819 average. It landed in third place overall with J.D. Power.
Auto-Owners didn’t score as well as many competitors in this category, with 67% of customers polled saying they’re satisfied. Several companies rated in the 80s in this category, which was topped by Erie.
Auto-Owners scored well in this category, although it didn’t win. The survey found that 81% of customers found Auto-Owners easy to deal with. American Family led this category among ranked companies, with 89% of its customers saying they were satisfied.
Auto-Owners isn’t the most recommended company for home insurance of those surveyed, but customers still would recommend it to others at a rate of 86%. Many competitors scored better in this category, which, among ranked companies, was led by Erie.
Auto-Owners rated lower than some companies, with 65% of customers saying they trust their insurance company. American Family led this category, with 89% of its customers saying they trust it, but most companies didn’t do especially well here.
Of the Auto-Owners customers surveyed, 81% plan to renew their home insurance with the company. That’s one of the lower scores in this category, although most companies performed well here. Erie was the category leader.
Auto-Owners customers are mostly satisfied with the claims experience, with 74% saying they were pleased. That’s a middle-of-the-road score compared to other companies on our list. Category and overall first-place winner Erie is the only company to break 90% in this category, at 92%.
J.D. Power gives Auto-Owners a rating of 853/1,000 for claims satisfaction, rating it below average on the Property Claims Satisfaction survey for 2023.
When asked to choose the three things their insurance company is best for, only 23% of Auto-Owners customers chose the digital experience. That’s not surprising given Auto-Owners’ commitment to using independent agents and not offering online quoting.
Ratings for the Auto-Owners app are in line; it has a 3.5 rating in the Google play store and 3.1 in the Apple store.
Auto-Owners bundling discount is on the lower side at 12%, although lower base rates might make up for it. A solid 49% of Auto-Owners customers chose bundling as one of its top three attributes. Only two companies had higher scores: American Family at 50% and Erie at 73%.
In the survey, 42% of Auto-Owners customers picked discounts as one of the three things they feel the company is best at; most companies scored in the 40s here. The highest score in this category was 54% for American Family.
Auto-Owners Insurance Group was founded in 1916 and has its headquarters in Lansing, MI. It sells auto, home, life insurance and more through a network of 48,000 independent agents. The company has more than 4,700 employees. It’s a Fortune 500 company that is dedicated to selling insurance solely through agents, as it has for over 100 years.
Sources:
Auto-Owners “Homeowners” Accessed January 2024.
Auto-Owners. “History” Accessed January 2024.
J.D. Power. “2023 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study.” Accessed January 2024.
J.D. Power. “2023 U.S. Home Insurance Study.” Accessed January 2024.
Insure.com in the fall of 2023 surveyed more than 1,750 insurance consumers (1,151 people with home insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR.
Respondents were asked to name their home insurer and then grade it in the following categories: customer satisfaction, ease of service, claims satisfaction and policy offerings. The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.
Respondents were then asked to pick their insurer’s top three attributes out of more than a dozen presented – including digital experience, discounts best for auto/home bundling and best for discounts. The number of responses for each attribute were totaled before dividing by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create a percentage.
Respondents were then asked if they would recommend their home insurer to someone else and if they planned to renew their policies. The percentage who said yes is presented in the results.
Finally, respondents were given the statement “I trust my insurance company” and asked if they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. The percentage of those who said they agreed or strongly agreed is presented in the results.
The editors compiled the survey results and then selected – based on the number of survey responses – the top companies for further evaluation.
They then collected AM Best data, which measure financial strength, and National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ complaint data, which ranks a company by the number of customer complaints it receives. The Insure.com team identified the NAIC company code or codes that were the primary underwriting companies for each carrier and line of business using total annual premiums. The associated NAIC complaint index score was used in the calculations. If more than one underwriting company was identified for a line, the editors used a weighted average of the NAIC complaint index scores.
They also collected insurance rate data from Quadrant Information Services.
With the help of Prof. David Marlett, Ph.D., Managing Director of the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center at Appalachian State University, the editors created a rating system to determine which insurance companies were best in each sector. For home insurers, we took the following and gave each a weight.
Each insurer was awarded between half a star and 5 stars. No company in the ranking received less than half a star in any category, and 5 stars was the most any insurer could receive.