Erie auto insurance ranked No. 6 in Insure.com’s ranking of the Best Auto Insurance Companies for 2023 with 3.2 stars out of 5. Erie customers give it high marks in customer service.
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In the Insure.com 2023 Best Insurance Companies survey, few companies ranked as high for customer satisfaction as Erie. The company also ranks highly for policy offerings.
Customers were keen to recommend Erie to friends and family, and the company was consistently one of the most affordable companies in our survey. However, Erie is a smaller company, with coverage only available in 12 states.
Overall, Erie auto insurance ranked No. 6 in Insure.com’s ranking of the Best Car Insurance Companies for 2023 with 3.2 stars out of 5.
Below is Insure.com’s review of the company. It’s based on third-party metrics and an in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here, including an explanation of our survey scores.
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.
Erie Insurance has low rates compared to other companies in our survey with a national average cost of $1,362 a year, or $105 a month, which is lower than Travelers but $6 more expensive per month than Nationwide
Erie and Travelers have the highest scores for customer satisfaction of all the companies in our ranking. In the survey, 96% of customers were satisfied or highly satisfied with Erie overall.
Erie Insurance ranks in the top third of our survey in terms of ease of service. Eighty-seven percent of customers were pleased with Erie’s ease of accessing policy documents and services in our survey.
When it comes to policy offerings, Erie Insurance is one of the best. Of the customers surveyed, 91% said they were satisfied with the company’s offerings – the best score among the top 10 companies.
Customers would overwhelmingly recommend Erie Insurance to their friends and relatives. In the survey, 96% of customers said they’d recommend the company to others. Erie and Travelers had the best showing of the companies Insure.com ranked.
Customers, however, didn’t find Erie to be as trustworthy as some competitors. About 75% of customers say they trust the company. That wasn’t near the top, but not the lowest score – most companies scored in the 70th or 80th percentile. Travelers did the best in this category.
Erie Insurance customers do plan to renew in a big way. A full 100% of respondents said they would renew their policies.
Erie Insurance had a lower survey score for claims handling, with fewer customers saying it’s the best in this. However, Erie scored well on J.D. Power’s annual auto claims satisfaction survey. Its score of 893/1,000 was the highest among the companies we ranked. The average was 873.
Erie Insurance was founded on the shores of the lake with the same name back in 1925 and is still headquartered there to this day. The company sells multiple types of insurance and is in the Fortune 500. AM Best gave Erie an A+ rating. Listed on the NASDAQ, Erie Insurance employs about 6,000 people and writes policies in a dozen states.
Erie Insurance. “Auto insurance.” Accessed December 2022.
Erie Insurance. “Car insurance coverage explained.” Accessed December 2022.
J.D. Power. “Insurers Struggle to Manage Expectations in Auto Claims Process as Repair Times Increase, J.D. Power Finds.” Accessed December 2022.
J.D. Power. “Usage-Based Auto Insurance Takes Center Stage as Satisfaction Flatlines, J.D. Power Finds.” Accessed December 2022.
Insure.com in the fall of 2022 surveyed more than 1,500 people with auto, home, life and health insurance (1,080 people with auto insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR. Respondents were asked to name their insurer and the editors then selected – based on the number of responses – the top companies for this year’s Best auto insurance companies ranking. Insure.com needed 20 or more of a company’s customers to respond to the survey for that insurer to be included in the ranking, although in some categories the editors did consider companies with 18 or 19 responses.
Respondents were first asked to grade their insurer in the following categories – customer satisfaction, 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.
Survey score calculation: Respondents were then asked to rank their insurer’s top three attributes out of more than a dozen presented – including customer satisfaction and policy offerings. For a number one choice, five points were given; for a second choice, three points; and for a third choice, a single point. The total points for each choice – first, second and third – were then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create a percentage. Those percentages are presented in the results as scores.
Respondents were then asked if they would recommend their insurer to someone else. The percentage who said yes is presented in the results.
They also 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 collected National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ complaint data, which ranks a company by the number of customer complaints it receives, and AM Best data, which measures financial strength.
They also collected insurance rate data from Quadrant Information Services (for auto and home insurance), Compulife (for life insurance) and the public health marketplace (for health insurance).
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 auto and home insurers, we used the following weights to calculate the overall score for each company:
In our rankings, no company received less than 1 star and no company received more than 5.