Why there is no ranking here
A ranking of home insurance companies would need to pretend that the market is one market. It is not. Home insurance is priced and sold state by state, and an insurer that is strong in one state may not sell in another, or may sell there through a different company with different rates and different claims staff. An insurer that is cheap for a new house may be expensive for an old one. An insurer with excellent claims service for a small water claim may be slow on a large hurricane claim. A single national ranking hides all of that behind one number, and the number usually reflects the author's commercial relationships more than it reflects the policies. This site does not publish carrier rankings, and the long-term care companies guide and the best homeowners guide on this site say the same thing for the same reason.
The second problem with a ranking is that it answers the wrong question. The question most buyers actually need answered is not which insurer is best in general, but which policy fits their house: the rebuild cost, the settlement method, the exclusions and the deductible. Those are questions about the policy, not about the company, and a ranking that names a company without naming the policy form, the settlement method and the deductible has not answered them. A buyer who chooses by ranking and then buys the insurer's cheapest policy form may have bought the worst policy that insurer sells. The method in this guide is designed to avoid that mistake: judge the policy first, and judge the company second, on the things the company actually controls.
The third problem is time. Rankings describe the past: last year's claims service, last year's complaint counts, last year's prices. An insurer's rates are re-filed, its claims staff changes, its appetite for a state or a risk changes, and a ranking published last year may describe a company that no longer exists in that form. The checks in this guide are checks you can run today, on the insurer in front of you, in your state, for your house — and they do not go out of date in the same way, because they are about the policy wording and the claims process rather than about a league table.
What an insurance company actually does
An insurer does three things, and each one matters to the buyer. First, it prices the risk: it takes the facts about the house — rebuild cost, roof age, location, claims history, credit where the state allows it — and turns them into a premium, using a rating plan filed with the state regulator. The price is the most visible thing an insurer does, and it is the thing buyers compare most, but it is also the thing that varies most between insurers for the same house, because each insurer's rating plan weighs the same facts differently. Two insurers can look at the same house and produce premiums far apart, and both can be right by their own rating plan.
Second, the insurer holds the money to pay claims. An insurer is a promise to pay in the future, and the promise is only as good as the money behind it. Regulators require insurers to hold reserves against the claims they expect, and to hold capital against the claims they do not expect, and they can intervene when an insurer's finances weaken. A buyer cannot judge an insurer's reserves from the outside, but can check whether the insurer is licensed in the state — an unlicensed insurer is not subject to the state's supervision — and can check the state regulator's pages for any action against it. The practical rule is simple: buy from a licensed insurer, in your state, and be cautious of any seller who cannot show a licence.
Third, the insurer runs the claims process: the adjuster who inspects the damage, the decision to pay or deny, the speed of payment, and the route for disputing a decision. This is the part of the insurer that the buyer meets only after a loss, and it is the part that decides whether the policy was worth buying. A cheap premium from an insurer whose claims process is slow, opaque or hard to reach is the most expensive policy you can buy, because the saving on the premium is smaller than the cost of a claim that is delayed or denied. The rest of this guide is about judging that process before the loss, when you still have a choice.
How to judge an insurer without a ranking
Start with the licence and the regulator. Every insurer selling homeowners cover in your state must be licensed there, and the state insurance department — or, in some states, the department of financial services — publishes the licence, the company's filings and any enforcement action. Check the licence first, and check whether the company selling the policy is the company whose name is on the advertisement: large insurance groups sell through several companies, and the company on the policy may have a different claims process from the group whose name is on the website. The state regulator is also where complaints go, and the route for complaining is worth knowing before the policy is bought rather than after a claim is denied.
Then check the complaints record, in your state. The NAIC publishes complaint data that lets you compare insurers by the number of complaints relative to their size, and state departments publish their own complaint figures. A complaint ratio is not a verdict — a large insurer will have more complaints than a small one, and a complaint is not the same as a justified complaint — but a ratio that is high for the state, sustained over time, is information, and it is information about the insurer's behaviour rather than about its advertising. Read the ratio alongside the company's size and the state's average, not on its own, and remember that complaint data describes the past: it tells you how the insurer treated other people's claims, which is the best available evidence of how it will treat yours.
Then check satisfaction surveys, and read them for what they are. J.D. Power publishes satisfaction rankings for homeowners insurers, built from surveys of customers who have bought, or claimed on, a policy. The site's guide to home insurance companies by customer satisfaction explains how those rankings are built and how to use them. A satisfaction ranking is useful for the claims experience — speed, communication, fairness — and less useful for the price, because the customers surveyed bought different policies at different prices. Use the ranking as one input, not as a decision, and check whether the ranking covers your state: a national ranking that averages across states may not describe the insurer's service where you live.
Claims service: the test that matters most
The claims process has four stages, and each one is worth asking about before buying. First, notification: how do you report a claim, and how quickly must you do it — by phone, online, through an agent, and within what window. Second, inspection: who inspects the damage, how quickly, and whether you can choose your own contractor for the repair. Third, decision: how long the insurer has to pay or deny, and what it must tell you when it denies. Fourth, dispute: what happens if you disagree — internal review, mediation, the state regulator, and, in the last resort, the courts. The numbers differ by state, and the site's Florida denied-claim guide gives one state's figures as an example: 14 days to acknowledge, 90 days to pay or deny, and free mediation through the Department of Financial Services. Other states set different numbers, and the policy itself sets some of the process, so the declarations page and the policy wording are the documents to read.
Two questions separate good claims service from bad, and neither appears in a ranking. The first is whether the insurer pays at replacement cost or at actual cash value, and whether the roof is settled differently from the rest of the house — the settlement method decides what the claim pays, and a policy that settles the roof at actual cash value will pay far less on an older roof than a policy that settles it at replacement cost. The site's ACV versus RCV guide explains the difference in full. The second is the deductible that applies to the claim you are most likely to make: a wind and hail deductible of 2% on a $300,000 house is $6,000, and a claim for a damaged roof may be smaller than the deductible, which means the insurer pays nothing at all. A buyer who knows the settlement method and the deductible before the loss will not be surprised after it.
Ask the insurer, or the agent, for the claims process in writing before buying: how claims are reported, who inspects, how long payment takes, and what the dispute route is. An insurer that cannot describe its own process clearly is telling you something about the process. And keep the policy, the declarations page and the claims contact details together, in a place you can reach after a loss — a flooded house is a bad time to discover that the only copy of the policy was in the house.
Mutuals, stock companies and agents
Insurers come in different legal forms, and the form changes who the company answers to. A mutual insurer is owned by its policyholders: the people who buy the policies own the company, and any surplus can be returned to them as dividends or held as capital. A stock insurer is owned by shareholders: the people who own the company are not the people who buy the policies, and the surplus goes to shareholders. Neither form is better in general — mutuals are sometimes described as more aligned with policyholders, and stock companies as more able to raise capital — but the form is worth knowing, because it explains some of the difference in behaviour: a mutual that returns dividends is sharing its surplus with the people who paid the premiums, and a stock company that raises its premium is answering to shareholders as well as to policyholders.
How you buy matters as much as what you buy. A captive agent sells for one insurer, and knows that insurer's policies deeply. An independent agent sells for several insurers, and can compare them — but the comparison is only as good as the agent's panel, and an agent who sells for three insurers cannot compare the fourth. A direct sale, online or by phone, cuts out the agent, and the price may be lower, but there is nobody to call when the claim is disputed except the insurer itself. None of these routes is right in general; the question is whether the person selling you the policy can explain the settlement method, the exclusions and the deductible, and whether they will be there when you need them. If the seller cannot explain the policy, the policy is not the problem — the seller is.
One more structural point: some insurers sell homeowners cover only as part of a bundle with auto cover, and some sell it standalone. A bundle can lower the combined price, and the site's bundles guide works through the decision, but the bundle should not be the reason to choose the insurer: choose the insurer for the policy, and take the bundle discount if it follows, not the other way round. A bundle that drops a limit or raises a deductible to make the combined price look lower is not a saving.
The checks to run before you buy
Run these checks in order, and do not buy until all of them pass. First, the licence: is the insurer licensed in your state, under the name on the policy. Second, the policy: does the dwelling limit match the rebuild cost, does the roof settle at replacement cost or actual cash value, what are the sub-limits on valuables, and what are the exclusions — flood, earthquake, wear and tear, water backup. Third, the deductible: what is the flat deductible, and is there a separate wind, hail or hurricane deductible, and can you pay it from savings on the day of a loss. Fourth, the claims record: what does the complaint data say in your state, what do the satisfaction surveys say about claims, and can the insurer describe its claims process in writing. Fifth, the price: compare like with like, on identical limits, identical deductibles and identical settlement methods, and compare the total cost of owning the house, not the premium alone.
If two insurers pass all five checks, the tie-breakers are the small things that matter after a loss: how claims are reported, whether there is a local adjuster or a remote one, how quickly the insurer acknowledges a claim in your state, and whether the agent who sold the policy will help with the claim. Those are the things a ranking cannot measure, and they are the things that decide whether the policy was worth buying. The best homeowners guide on this site works through the policy side of the decision in full; this guide works through the company side. Read them together, and buy the policy that passes both.
Worked example
Consider an ILLUSTRATIVE buyer comparing two insurers for the same house. The first is cheaper per year, but its policy settles the roof at actual cash value, carries a 2% wind and hail deductible, and its complaint ratio in the buyer's state is above the state average. The second costs more per year, settles the roof at replacement cost, carries a flat deductible for wind and hail, and its complaint ratio is below the state average. After a hailstorm damages the roof, the first insurer pays the depreciated value of the roof minus $6,000; the second pays the replacement cost minus the flat deductible. The difference between the two payments is larger than years of premium saving, and the buyer who chose by price alone has paid more in total. The example's value is the method, not the figures: no premium is stated, because premiums vary by house and state. What it shows is that the company matters through the policy it sells and the claims it pays, not through its position in a ranking.