Farmers is ranked highly in the 2023 Insure.com Best Insurance Companies survey for auto insurance with 2 stars out of 5, with most customers saying they’re satisfied with the company’s policy offerings and bundling home and auto.
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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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Farmers, one of the largest auto insurers in the U.S. with around 5% of the industry’s market share, ranked highly in Insure.com’s survey of insurance consumers for discounts and bundling home and auto policies.
Overall, Farmers ranked No. 10 in Insure.com’s ranking of the Best Car Insurance Companies for 2023 with 2 stars out of 5. Farmers has higher premiums than all but one of the top companies on our list, which brought its star score down.
Farmers received an A rating from AM Best, which measures the company’s credit rating and financial strength and a J.D. Power score of 815 (out of 1,000) for customer service.
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.
The table below shows how much auto insurance from Farmers costs compared with monthly rates from its competitors, according to 2022 data. Farmers isn’t the cheapest, but it isn’t the most expensive either.
When it comes to customer satisfaction, 78% of Farmers’ customers said they were satisfied with the company’s customer service, which wasn’t as high a grade as some competitors received. Another customer satisfaction metric to consider is J.D. Power. Farmers’ J.D. Power rating was 815, which is just a bit lower than the average J.D. Power customer satisfaction rating of 834 (on a 1,000-point scale) for auto insurance companies in 2022. J.D. Power grades auto insurance companies on state/regional levels – it doesn’t offer national scores. We averaged the state/regional results to get a sense of how the companies did as a whole.
Farmers received higher-than-average marks from its customers when it comes to accessing policy documents and services. Eighty-two percent of Farmers customers said they were satisfied, compared with 73% of Auto-Owners customers and 88% of Allstate customers.
When it comes to policy offerings, 85% of Farmers respondents said they’re satisfied with the companies’ policy offerings like rideshare coverage, umbrella insurance and homeowners/condo/rental policies. Erie scored the highest in this category.
In all, 84% of Farmers customers said they would recommend the company to others. But most companies had percentages in the upper eighties and nineties in this category. Erie and Travelers led this category.
Farmers earned decent marks for trustworthiness with a score of 73%, but that number put it in the middle of the pack among our top 10 companies – behind State Farm but ahead of Nationwide.
Regarding renewals, 87% of Farmers customers said they’d renew. Most companies did well in this category. Farmers finished behind top earners Erie, Nationwide and Progressive.
When it comes to claims handling, a few competitors, such as Allstate, ranked better than Farmers in our survey. However, looking at a third-party metric, Farmers scored above average on J.D. Power’s claims satisfaction survey at 882/1,000.
Respondents rated Farmers as one of the top companies in our survey for discounts, following just a handful of companies including State Farm and Progressive.
When it comes to discounts and bundling home and auto policies, Farmers was ranked highly by survey respondents. American Family and Travelers had the highest ratings, but Farmers came in with a respectable 62% of respondents saying it was best for bundling.
In 1928, Farmers was launched out of a one-room office in downtown Los Angeles. Farmers expanded to acquire New World Life Company of Seattle and became the first major insurance organization to offer a monthly payment plan that didn’t charge customers any interest. In 2021, Farmers completed an acquisition of MetLife’s home and auto business.
Farmers was the first U.S.-based insurance carrier to sign the Principles for Sustainable Insurance pledge, which is a collaboration between the United Nations and global insurance companies to advance sustainable practices across the industry. The UN called this pledge “a landmark step in advancing sustainable insurance thinking and practices across a range of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues such as climate change, nature and biodiversity loss.”
Farmers Insurance. “Available Insurance Discounts.” Accessed December 2022.
S&P Global Market Intelligence. “2022 US Auto Insurance Market Report.” 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.
United Nations Environment Programme – Finance Initiative. “Farmers Insurance Exchange Becomes First U.S. Insurer to Sign the U.N. Principles for Sustainable Insurance.” 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: