USAA is a notable homeowners insurance company in the 2023 Insure.com Best Insurance Companies survey, and the best for military members and their families.
Barry Eitel is a content writer and journalist focused on insurance, small business and finance. He has researched and written about personal finance since 2012, with a special focus on entrepreneurship, freelancing and other small business operations. His writing on insurance and small business has been featured in 7x7, Brit + Co, Intuit Quickbooks, Bankrate, Policygenius and Lendio.
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USAA is one of the top companies for homeowners insurance. However, USAA is only available to military members, veterans and their families. If you’re eligible for USAA membership, the rates for home insurance are very competitive.
In addition to earning top marks for low rates, USAA also scores well for its digital experience and its great discounts for military members. More than 90% of USAA customers in our survey say they’re satisfied overall, and 98% plan to renew.
USAA received an A++ credit rating from AM Best, a measurement of financial strength, and a J.D. Power score of 884 (out of 1,000) for customer satisfaction in its 2022 Home Insurance Study. That would have been a winning score, but since USAA limits eligibility, J.D. Power doesn’t rank it.
Due to USAA’s eligibility requirements, it is not ranked in the 2023 Best Insurance Companies home insurance survey but remains a notable company.
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, including an explanation of our survey scores.
Not only does USAA have an average annual rate significantly below the national average of $2,433, but it’s also fairly cheap compared to its major competitors. However, some companies, like Allstate, have lower rates.
USAA home insurance holds the distinction of having the highest J.D. Power overall satisfaction score of any home insurance company in the U.S. Home Insurance Study for 2022, although it doesn’t win the award since it’s limited to the military. Our survey found that USAA scores among the highest, just a few percentage points behind State Farm.
Perhaps USAA’s high rate of customer satisfaction is related to its depth of policy offerings – it offers life, personal property, auto and home/condo/renters insurance – because our survey found that it tied with Progressive and State Farm, and a scored a little above Allstate. Auto-Owners took the top spot in this category.
When it comes to ease of service – a metric that rates how easy it is for customers to access policy documents and make changes – USAA customers are fairly satisfied as it scored in the high 80th percentile. Most of the companies surveyed scored in the 80th percentile range for ease of service. Travelers led this category.
If you know a USAA customer, then you are likely to hear about the company’s home insurance: It scored just behind State Farm as the second-most recommended company. Most companies scored in the 80s or 90s in this category.
Of major home insurers, we found that USAA scored second for trustworthiness, just a point behind top-rated State Farm and just above Allstate.
USAA members stick with USAA, we found – the company scored the highest for renewals at 98%. Travelers and State Farm were right behind.
USAA scored a little lower in the ratings for claims satisfaction compared to overall customer satisfaction, but potential customers should note that it has a high J.D. Power score in the 2022 Property Claims Satisfaction Study – its score of 893 is the highest of all companies. Again, although it has the highest score, J.D. Power doesn’t rank USAA due to its eligibility criteria.
In our study, Liberty Mutual, which, like USAA, is not ranked, led this category followed by Allstate
USAA scored well for digital experience. That includes customers’ views of the app and website, which is important because USAA has few physical locations. It should be noted that most companies didn’t do particularly well in this survey category.
The USAA app has a five-star rating and 1.6M downloads in the Apple App Store, and a 4.1 score in the Google Play store.
USAA doesn’t offer a very high bundling discount on average, and it scored in the middle of the pack when it comes to customer satisfaction with its bundling options. Its average discount for bundling home and auto is 10%, which was on the lower end of the spectrum. Travelers and Farmers both did well in this category.
As you might expect, USAA is very highly rated for military discounts by its home insurance customers. There is a massive gap between USAA and competitors in this category, with second-rated Progressive scoring 33 percentage points below USAA. Only half of the home insurance companies received a score at all in this category.
USAA scored near the bottom for discounts, according to customers we surveyed, which makes some sense because the company focuses on providing lower base insurance rates for service members. Liberty Mutual, which, like USAA, is not ranked, won this category.
In 1922, USAA was founded in San Antonio when 25 Army officers came together to insure each other’s automobiles. In 1946, USAA added several new automated office machines, becoming an industry leader in technology.
The USAA website launched in 1999, and by 2009 all people who are serving or have honorably served in the U.S. military and their families become eligible for membership. By 2017, USAA served over 12 million members, with a net worth of $31 billion.
Sources:
USAA. “What is 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
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 A.M. 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:
No company in the ranking received less than 1 star in any category and 5 stars was the most any insurer could receive.