5th Look: The Massachusetts Private Passenger Auto Insurance Marketplace

The latest numbers for our October bi-monthly market share update are here. The following numbers on the Massachusetts Private Passenger Auto Insurance Marketplace are from July 2021, the latest date for which complete data is available.

As always, many thanks to the Commonwealth Automobile Reinsurers, which acts as the statistical agent for motor vehicle insurance in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and provides Agency Checklists with all the data presented here.

An overview of the Private Passenger Marketplace in the United States

Top 25 U.S. Auto Insurers | NAIC Market Share Report

The Private Passenger Auto Insurance Marketplace continues to be the largest line of insurance in the U.S. with a total of $253,238,614,669 in Direct Written Premiums. This represents approximately 34.40% of all reported written premiums in the U.S.

In total, the U.S. Property & Casualty Marketplace has a total of $725,264,505,782 in Direct Written Premiums and $710,699,877,156 in Direct Premiums Earned in 2020. To learn more about the latest national results, view Agency Checklists’ NAIC Market Share Report 2021: The Top 25 U.S. Auto Insurers.

In addition to CAR’s updates on the Private Passenger Auto Insurance Marketplace throughout the year, the Division of Insurance also publishes an official statement on the state of this market each year.

Unlike CAR’s raw data, however, the Division’s Market Share Report’s most recent report on this marketplace dates from 2018 and reflects an official tally and analysis of complete data for that year. For those interested in accessing the DOI’s latest numbers please refer to Agency Checklists MA Market Share Report 2020: Private Passenger Auto Insurers.

A breakdown of the Marketplace in Massachusetts by Exposures and Market Share

A list of all the current writers of Private Passenger Auto Insurers as ranked by premiums and corresponding market share. The following are some insights from this month’s data:

As of July 2021, there were a total of 2,900,570 exposures in the private passenger automobile insurance marketplace in Massachusetts.
MAPFRE/Commerce continues to hold the largest share of this marketplace with a 21.94% market share. This is slightly less than the 22.02% market share the company had in our last update.
GEICO and Liberty occupy the second and third spots, respectively, with 14.30% and 8.52% market shares.
Safety Insurance continues to occupy the fourth spot with an 8.25% market share as of July, while Arbella rounds out the top five with a 7.80% market share.
The top five private passenger writers write more than half of all the private passenger auto insurance in the commonwealth with a total combined market share of 60.81%.
The top 10 private passenger auto insurance writers have an event greater share of the marketplace, with an 83.94% total combined market share.
Six of the 10 auto writers continue to be Massachusetts-domiciled insurers, while half of the top 20 insurers are based in New England.

A look at the state of the Private Passenger Auto Insurance Marketplace

Insurer	Exposures	Market Share
1. MAPFRE/COMMERCE	636,478	21.94%
2. GEICO	414,918	14.30%
3. LIBERTY MUTUAL	247,268	8.52%
4. SAFETY	239,275	8.25%
5. ARBELLA	226,213	7.80%
6. PLYMOUTH ROCK	191,349	6.60%
7. PROGRESSIVE	173,009	5.96%
8. STANDARD FIRE	117,564	4.05%
9. U S A A	103,868	3.58%
10. HANOVER	85,358	2.94%
11. METROPOLITAN	83,819	2.89%
12. AMICA MUTUAL	82,412	2.84%
13. ALLSTATE	60,222	2.08%
14. QUINCY MUTUAL	49,139	1.69%
15. NORFOLK AND DEDHAM MUTUAL	36,533	1.26%
16. VERMONT MUTUAL	30,555	1.05%
17. NATIONAL GRANGE	26,953	0.93%
18. ZURICH	24,039	0.83%
19. STATE FARM	12,015	0.41%
20. GREEN MOUNTAIN	10,808	0.37%
21. PREFERRED MUTUAL	10,719	0.37%
22. BANKERS STANDARD	7,996	0.28%
23. PURE	7,358	0.25%
24. ELECTRIC	5,891	0.20%
25. TRUMBULL	4,905	0.17%
26. FARM FAMILY	4,849	0.17%
27. CINCINNATI	2,554	0.09%
28. AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL	1,748	0.06%
29. MIDDLESEX	848	0.03%
30. TOKIO	758	0.03%
31. HARLEYSVILLE WORCESTER	730	0.03%
32. MARKEL AMERICAN	368	0.01%
33. FIREMEN’S INS CO	24	0.00%
34. AMERICAN FAMILY	15	0.00%
35. PHILADELPHIA	10	0.00%
TOTALS	2,900,570	100.00%

Shifts & Trends in the Private Passenger Auto Insurance Marketplace

In order to give some perspective on the shifts in the marketplace over the past decade, the following three graphs depict the Top Ten Private Passenger Insurers for the month of July 2021, followed by the same graph for the same month, from five years earlier in July 2016, and then finally from a decade ago in July 2011.

The goal is to present a more complete perspective on how the Massachusetts automobile insurance market has shifted during this highlighted period. Unlike in past updates, all of the past years included in this review have now been during “Managed Competition”.