The New York State Insurance Department is out with its 2008 Annual Ranking of Automobile Insurance Complaints, based on 2006 and 2007 data.
Insurers were ranked based on a complaint ratio. This ratio was determined by the number of complaints upheld against companies as a percentage of their total private passenger auto insurance business and calculated using an average of two years’ premium data. This compensated for the fact that some complaints closed in any given year are begun in the previous year. Insurers with the fewest upheld complaints per million dollars of premiums appeared at the top of the list. Those with the highest complaint ratios are ranked at the bottom.
So, in short, the top ten are the insurance companies that fared the best when the Insurance Department reviewed the complaints–the best of the worst. Of course, it could be interpreted to mean that those companies are doing something right, that if the insurance companies at the bottom started behaving like the ones at the top, there would be fewer complaints, or, at the very least, there would be fewer complaints that had any merit.
Who had the most complaints? In no particular order:
State Farm: 409 (ranked # 10)
Progressive: 418 (ranked # 13)
Lib. Mutual: 381 (ranked # 14)
Travelers: 324 (ranked # 18)
Geico: 1,182 (ranked # 21)
Allstate: 957 (ranked # 22)
Autoone: 380 (ranked # 33)
AIG: 342 (does it really matter at this point)
Generally, the amount of complaints corresponds to the amount of premiums written–$$$.
Have a look at Mura’s post for the top ten in the rankings.