Higher Premiums and Claim Handling Causes Poor Customer Satisfaction for Insurance Companies
According to the recently released J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study, higher premiums and longer wait time for claim handling are making property owners less satisfied with their homeowners coverage.
“Customers are, in essence, paying higher prices for slower service,” said Mark Garrett, director of insurance intelligence at J.D. Power in a press release. “The average claimant does not receive final payment on a claim until 44 days after the first notice of loss, and unless insurers communicate frequently and clearly along the way, customer satisfaction suffers.”
J.D. Power ranks insurance companies on a 1000-point scale and this year, the average overall customer satisfaction was 682. Chubb ranked first when it came to property insurance claims experience, hitting 773 with Amica grabbing second place at 745 and The Hartford was number three with a score of 725.
Longer waits and more expensive premiums
According to the report, the average claim cycle time hit 32.4 days. This means it is taking over a month for most claims to move from the initial filing of the claim to the car being fully repaired.
It is taking even longer for policyholders to receive final payment, J.D. Power found that it now takes an average of more than 44 days, for final payment to be issued on a claim which the longest wait time since 2008.
The wait time for claims absolutely has a major impact on satisfaction scores, the report indicated that a claim completed within 10 days scored a 762 while repairs taking more than 31 days resulted in a score of 595.
Premiums seem to be headed up. Roughly half of the survey respondents had seen a premium increase in the past 12 months which led to lower satisfaction scores. Overall satisfaction dropped 101 points when insurers raised a policyholders rate unrelated to a claim.
“There were 27 catastrophic events in 2024 and 28 the year before,” Garrett said in a recent press release. “Homeowners insurers are currently losing roughly one nickel on every dollar of premium they collect, and with total cost of events like the California wildfires still being assessed, there seems to be no end in sight.”
J.D. Power found that communication can help keep policyholders happy. Average ustomer satisfaction scores were twice as high (777) when policyholders said it was easy to communicate with their insurance company compared to customers who claimed it was difficult or somewhat difficult to communicate with their insurer (337).
Customers found the need to leave voicemails, calling about questions over and over and not receiving a response to their emails and text messages particularly annoying which led to lower scores.
Customer satisfaction was higher for customers who had the option of using digital tools to file a claim. Letting policyholders submit photos of damages and receiving updates via text or email pushed up the average scores.
The use of technology skewed towards younger policyholders with 87% of Gen Z and Millennials claiming they are comfortable to manage the entire claims process digitally. This number drops to 60% when Boomers are asked if they can handle the claim process online.
According to J.D. Power, the study was redesigned for 2025 which makes this years scores incomparable with studies from other years.
This year’s study was designed to measure satisfaction with the property claims experience. It looked at 5,178 homeowner insurance customers experiences who filed a claim within the previous nine months. The study was fielded from January 2024 through December 2024.
The complete J.D. Power rankings of insurance companies is below: