A Tale of Two Lists: Comparing Home & Auto Insurers By Market Share vs. Their Consumer Rankings

A Comparison of the top Home & Auto Insurance Companies in Massachusetts

As our readers must surely know by now, Agency Checklists loves a good list. So when Stacy Varney, VP Marketing & Sales for Clearsurance got in touch to discuss our recent article “Round-Up Of Major Massachusetts Insurers Results For Q2-2018” our interested was piqued.

In particular, Ms. Varney thought it interesting the dichotomy between the best reviewed insurers on the Clearsurance website vs. the insurers included in our article. Agency Checklists thought this a valid point, but since not all of insurers here in Massachusetts are required to issue their results, particularly the many of the mutual insurers based here, our round-up articles only includes those insurers with a major market share here in the state and that are required to report quarterly and yearly results by law.

In discussing the data that Clearsurance has on various Massachusetts insurers, however, we did like the idea of comparing insurers by market share vs. their consumer ratings. As such, we asked Ms. Varney if she could share with our readers some of the Cleasurance ratings data she had on the Top Auto and Home insurers in Massachusetts. These two lines were selected, in particular, because they are typically the most important to both insurers, agents, and consumers in equal measure.

While we understand that a list of market share and consumer ratings are two different metrics, we thought it would make for an insightful comparison not only for both insurers, as well as those agents who represent them. This is by no means a scientific endeavor, but just something that we thought might give an additional perspective on the top insurers in these lines versus how they are ranked by consumers.

The Top Home & Auto Insurers In Massachusetts By Market Share vs. The Top Home & Auto Insurers In Mass by Consumer Ratings

In response to our query, Ms. Varney shared Clearsurance’s list of the top-rated companies in Massachusetts based on the policyholder reviews and ratings of companies that sell home and auto insurance in the state of MA. Clearsurance collects ratings and reviews from real customers who share their insurance experiences on their platform. To date, Clearsurance has received over 115,000 ratings and reviews from policyholders nationally on nearly 500 different personal lines insurance companies. Here is what she found:

“Below are the top 10 home and top 10 auto insurers in the state of MA, along with the corresponding Clearsurance independent consumer rating for each as of August 27, 2018,” she explains. “Our state pages are always up-to-date so they can differ from week to week based on the number of new reviews we have curated.”

Take-aways from the comparison chart

One of the most interesting take-aways from this chart is to see that there is some overlap between those insurers with the largest market shares in Massachusetts vs. those ranked best by consumers. The most obvious example is MAPFRE. Not only is it the largest insurer in both Home & Auto in Massachusetts, it is also ranks as the third best company on Clearsurance’s consumer rankings.

The other interesting take-away is that four of the top ten rated companies by consumers were mutual insurance companies based in New England: Amica: Vermont Mutual: Plymouth Rock; and Arbella. In any case, this might be a useful chart not just for insurers but for agents who may be appointed to one or more of the companies to review.

“While all companies on these lists received ratings in the 4-star range (out of 5), there can be meaningful differences between them according to their policyholders,” said Ms. Varney.

“As you can see, the Clearsurance Top 10 lists and the Top Home and Auto lists shared here by Agency Checklists contain some notable differences – there are a few companies on the Clearsurance lists that do not appear on the Agency Checklist lists and likewise, there are a some companies on the Agency Checklist lists that aren’t present on ours. This demonstrates that the market leaders, in terms of inforce premium, are not necessarily the same companies consumers feel are the best companies from a service perspective.”

For those readers looking to dig deeper into the data, the following are links to each of the home and auto lists published by both Agency Checklists and Clearsurance:

• MA Top Rated Auto list – https://clearsurance.com/car-insurance/MA
• MA Top Rated Homeowners list – https://clearsurance.com/homeowners-insurance/MA
• The Final 2017 Numbers On The Top 20 Private Passenger Auto Insurers In Massachusetts
• The Top 20 Homeowner’s Insurers in Massachusetts in 2018