Travelers is the No. 9 home insurance company in Insure.com’s 2024 Best Insurance Companies list, with a 3.7-star rating out of 5. Current customers recommend it, but high rates affected the company’s overall score.
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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Travelers ranked fairly well in most categories on our survey and has a low complaint ratio with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, helping to land it on the Best home Insurance Companies list at No. 9.
Travelers’ customers were likely to recommend it to friends and family. In fact, 87% of Travelers customers would recommend it, and 90% said they plan to renew. The company received 3.7 (actually, 3.73) stars in our ranking.
Travelers’ home insurance rates are much higher than the national average and higher than other companies in our ranking by a wide margin. Overall, however, it’s a solid choice for home insurance, with an excellent A++ financial rating from AM Best.
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.
Travelers rates are much higher than other companies and well above the national average of $2,604 a year. Rates vary widely by location, but on a national level, Travelers is expensive.
Our survey found that 73% of Travelers customers rate it highly for customer satisfaction, lower than many competitors. Erie led this category. Travelers also scored below the average of 819 for overall satisfaction with J.D. Power’s Home Insurance Study.
Travelers scored on the low end for ease of service, with 73% of current customers in the survey saying they are satisfied or highly satisfied with the ease of getting the service they need from their insurance company. American Family had the highest score in this category among the companies we ranked.
Our survey found that 69% of respondents are happy with the policy offerings from Travelers. That was low, although not the lowest among ranked companies. Erie topped the category at 86%.
According to our survey, yes. Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they’d recommend Travelers to others. Most companies did well here, and Travelers’ score is high despite low rankings in some key areas. Again, Erie topped this category.
When asked in the survey, 69% of Travelers’ customers who responded said they trust their insurance company. Trust is a tough category for insurance companies, but many did perform better. American Family led this category.
In the survey, 90% of Travelers’ customers said they plan to renew their home insurance with the company. Most companies scored well in this category, but Erie topped it at 97%.
Based on our survey results, Travelers rated on the middle to low side for claims handling, with a score of 68%. Erie had the top score at 92% J.D Power gives Travelers a rating of 867/1000 for claims satisfaction, ranking it below the industry average of 874. As shown in the table, J.D. Power’s rankings didn’t always line up with ours.
When asked to choose the top three things at which their insurance company is best, 44% of Travelers customers chose digital experience as one of the three. That was the highest score, although Travelers tied for first here with Allstate and Progressive.The Travelers app has a 4.7-star rating in the Apple store and 3.5-star rating in the Google Play store, an indication that one platform may be better than the other for using this app.
Travelers offers a 12% auto and home bundling discount, and our survey found that it scored similarly to competitors; when customers were asked what three things their insurance company was best for, 44% of Travelers customers said auto and home bundling. Erie led this category.
Travelers offers a small range of discounts, and only 35% picked discounts as one of Travelers top three best attributes. But, it should be noted, no ranked company did particularly well in this category; American Family topped it at 54%.
Travelers is made up of two companies; one was founded in Saint Paul, Minnesota as St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Co in 1853. In 1863 The Travelers Insurance Company was founded in Hartford, Connecticut, and the two companies merged in 2004. The company officially took the Travelers name in 2007.
Today, it is a Fortune 500 company, and is the second-largest writer of commercial property casualty insurance in the country. It’s currently headquartered in New York City, with its largest office in Hartford. The company has more than 30,000 employees and operations in Europe, Asia, and South America.
Sources:
Travelers. “Homeowners insurance.” Accessed January 2024.
Travelers. “Home insurance discounts & savings.” 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.