Best Car Insurance Companies

Who are the best car insurance companies?

There are a couple of surprising points about the five best car insurance company lists, including:

• There's a chance many drivers haven't heard of any of these companies
• The best car insurance companies differ, a lot, from state to state

The reason these companies are not household names is they don't advertise. Advertising is expensive. Effective advertising is also a specialized discipline within marketing. However, the best insurance companies aren't marketing companies. No, they're insurance companies. First and foremost, these companies excel at helping customers recover when terrible things happen.

Identifying the Best Companies

There are only a few ways to identify the best insurance companies. The three most common methods for identifying the best car insurance companies are listed below. Of the three, only one method works.

Two Approaches That Don't Work

• Online reviews - Consumers rarely respond to requests to review insurance companies, unless a) they're paid, b) they're very angry. Paid for reviews are meaningless. Hence, online reviews of insurance companies are meaningless. Consumers should ignore online reviews of insurance companies.
• User-surveys - These can work, but have two significant limitations. 1) The questions asked and to whom the questions are asked are both common methods for manipulating the results of user-surveys. 2) Collecting enough data to analyze small companies is difficult. Therefore, only companies with the largest advertising budgets are rated with user surveys.

The Approach That Does Work

Data analytics - Use high-quality data. Data collected by state departments of insurance.

Enabling Consumers to Compare Car Insurance Companies

Properly comparing car insurance companies requires analyzing every company in the industry. Otherwise, the comparisons are not accurate. Not including all companies skews the data.

Here's an analogy. Not analyzing all companies is like not having the best students take a test, then grading on a curve. All students that take the test move up. To rate all companies, technology and a data-driven approach is required. Hence, ValChoice is the first company to enable consumers to truly compare car insurance. Finally, consumers have access to accurate, easy-to-understand comparisons.

Along with the 5 best car insurance companies lists, we offer side-by-side comparisons. Previously, the side-by-side comparisons were only available to insurance agents. This service is slowly rolling out because we are asking insurance companies to opt-in. However, it shouldn't be hard to get the buy-in. For companies that don't advertise, letting us brag for them about how great they are should be an easy decision.

About ValChoice

ValChoice is an independent insurance company rating and analytics company. Every year, we evaluate more than 25,000 companies across the United States. We use a combination of data — including information collected from SERFF, state insurance commissioners, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, AM Best Company, and S & P Market Intelligence — to determine the top-rated insurance companies in each state. No other organization does what we do. We're independent, unbiased, and trusted.