NU Online News Service, Dec. 14, 3:55 p.m. EST
Farmers Insurance experienced the largest drop, 3 percent, in customer satisfaction among property and casualty insurers, but overall the industry's score is unchanged, according to the latest University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
Los Angeles-based Farmers has been "clearly cemented at the bottom of the industry" for several years, said David VanAmberg, managing director of ACSI. He added that the margin of error was plus or minus 3 percent.
ACSI attributed the drop to the fact that Farmers, which scored 76 out of 100, does much of its writing in California and the Gulf Coast, where it could have difficulties with policyholders due to challenges with weather and economics.
Mr. VanAmberg said ACSI makes calls nationwide and questions people on customer service, policy choices and value.
"The feedback from these questions are weighted together to come up with the score," he said. The equation was developed by the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. ACSI has been taking the customer satisfaction measurements since 1994.
State Farm maintained its lead in consumer satisfaction among p&c writers, scoring 82, followed closely by GEICO with 81. ACSI said the insurers have relatively stable premiums and strong customer satisfaction performance.
Allstate and Progressive each fell 1 point to 79 and 78, respectively, ACSI said.
Other than the five named insurers in its index, ACSI includes "all others," which is an average of all other insurance companies gathered from the calls. The category scored an 80.
Customer satisfaction with health insurance fell 2.7 points to 73 after two years of improvement.
"Life and property and casualty typically do better with customers compared to health insurers because premiums are lower and policyholders have fewer reasons to interact with the insurance company, so there are fewer opportunities for things to go wrong," said Claes Fornell, author of the report, in a statement.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.