Erie Insurance home insurance review and ratings 2023

Erie Insurance is the No. 5 home insurer in the 2023 Insure.com Best Insurance Companies survey with a 3.4 star rating out of 5. The company offers some of the lowest home insurance rates among the companies in our insurance consumer survey.

Reviewed by: Leslie Kasperowiczquality verified
Leslie Kasperowicz
Leslie Kasperowicz

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.

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Our take

Erie customers rated it highly for customer satisfaction and ease of service, with 88% of customers satisfied in both categories, and rates are among the lowest of the companies surveyed.  Erie also scored relatively well in other areas when customers were asked to rate it. 

The company ranked in the No. 5 spot overall on the 2023 Best Home Insurance Companies list. 

As a smaller company, Erie doesn’t offer home insurance in even half of the states. Despite the limited availability, Erie rates above average with J.D. Power for both overall satisfaction and claims satisfaction, has a solid A rating from AM Best and carries enough weight to land among the top picks for home insurance.

Erie
Erie Ratings
Overall Rating: 3.4
Average Premium: 4.7
NAIC: 0.23
Customer Satisfaction: 4.4
AM Best Rating: A+

Pros and Cons

Pros:
  • Rates are below average
  • Scored among the best for customer satisfaction
  • Service is easy to use
Cons:
  • Only available in 12 states and Washington, D.C.
  • Didn’t score as well as competitors for renewals

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, including an explanation of our survey scores.

How much Erie costs

Erie Insurance has rates well below the national average of $2,433 and it has some of the cheaper rates among the companies Insure.com surveyed.

Company Average annual rate
Erie $2,089
State Farm $2,282
Nationwide $2,660

How Erie scores for customer satisfaction

Our survey found that 88% of Erie Insurance customers rate it highly for customer satisfaction – in line with American Family and Travelers – but better than many of its competitors. State Farm won in this category with 93%.

Erie also scored a little above average for overall satisfaction in J.D. Power’s 2022 study of customer satisfaction.

Company Percent of customers that are satisfied J.D. Power overall satisfaction score (out of 1,000)
Erie 88% 827
Travelers 88% 794
Nationwide 81% 816

How Erie scores on ease of service

Erie scored relatively highly for ease of service, with 88% customers on the survey saying they are satisfied or highly satisfied. That’s not far behind the category winner, Travelers.

Company Percent of customers satisfied with the company’s ease of service
Erie 88%
Travelers 91%
American Family 83%

How Erie scores on policy offerings

Our survey found that 83% of respondents are happy with the policy offerings from Erie Insurance. Erie’s policy offerings include standard homeowners, condo owners, renters insurance, mobile home policies, flood insurance and coverage for personal valuables. Travelers led this category.

Company Percent of customers satisfied with the company’s policy offerings
Erie 83%
Travelers 91%
Nationwide 81%

Would current customers recommend Erie Insurance to others?

According to our survey, 88% of respondents said they’d recommend Erie to others, but many other companies scored better in the survey. Almost all – 97% – of State Farm customers said they’d renew.

Company Percent of customers who would recommend the company to others
Erie 88%
State Farm 97%
Auto-Owners 89%

How trustworthy is Erie?

Erie scored in the lower half in this category, with 63% of its surveyed customers saying they trust the company. This was a difficult category for a lot of insurers – several companies saw their percentages in this category come in between 60% and 80% – but a handful scored higher. State Farm had the highest score at 83%.

Company Percent of customers who say they trust the company
Erie 63%
State Farm 83%
Farmers 69%

Do Erie’s customers plan to renew?

According to our survey, 88% of Erie’s customers plan to renew their home insurance with the company. Many competitors had renewal rates in the 90s. Travelers led this category.

Company Percent of customers who plan to renew with the company
Erie 88%
Travelers 97%
Nationwide 84%

How Erie scores on claims handling

Erie didn’t score particularly well in our survey. J.D Power, however, gives Erie a rating of 882/1,000 for claims satisfaction, rating it near the top. Liberty Mutual led this category, but isn’t ranked.

Company Survey score for claims handling J.D. Power claims satisfaction score (out of 1,000)
Erie 63% 882
Liberty Mutual 98% 876
Nationwide 67% 878

How Erie scores on auto and home bundling

Erie offers a 17% auto and home bundling discount, on average. Our survey found it rated right in the middle of the companies we list for combining auto and home insurance. It earned a survey score of 67%.

Company Survey score for auto and home bundling Average bundling discount
Erie 67% 17%
Travelers 75% 12%
Allstate 61% 16%

Erie Insurance coverage types

  • Standard homeowners
  • Condo owners
  • Renters
  • Mobile home
  • Flood
  • Personal valuables

Erie Insurance discounts

  • Multi-policy
  • Advanced quote
  • Fire/burglary alarm/sprinkler system credit

Other policies offered

  • Auto
  • Life
  • Motorcycle
  • RV
  • Boat
  • Business insurance
  • Collector car
  • ATV/snowmobile/golf cart

States where Erie offers coverage

Graph
Table
States where Erie offers coverage
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Maryland
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin
AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY
Available
Not available

Company background

Erie

Erie Insurance was founded in 1925 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Within 20 years, the company had expanded into Pittsburgh and written its first comprehensive liability insurance policy. In 1995, during the company’s 70th anniversary, it was listed on the NASDAQ. Eight years after that, it was listed in the Forbes 500.

Today, Erie Insurance is still headquartered in Erie, Pennsylvania, employs 6,000 people and works with more than 13,000 independent agents.

Resources and Methodology

Sources:

Erie Insurance. “Homeowners insurance.” Accessed December 2022.

J.D. Power. “2022 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study.” Accessed December 2022.

J.D. Power. “2022 U.S. Home Insurance Study.” Accessed December 2022.

Methodology

Insure.com in the fall of 2022 surveyed more than 1,500 people with auto, home, life and health insurance (805 with home 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 home 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.

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 used the following weights to calculate the overall score for each company: 

  • AM Best: 25% of total score
  • NAIC: 15% of total score
  • Annual premium: 20% of total score
  • Survey: 40% of total score (10% customer satisfaction, 10% recommended and 10% renewal rate, 10% claims handling)

No company in the ranking received less than 1 star in any category and 5 stars was the most any insurer could receive.

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