Lacie Glover spent more than five years covering health care costs and all types of insurance as a NerdWallet writer before becoming an assistant assigning editor in 2019 and later an assigning editor on the insurance team. As a writer, her work was featured in The Associated Press, The Motley Fool and U.S. News & World Report. Lacie is a NerdWallet authority on insurance products and loves data, analytics and solving SEO mysteries.
Amy DaniseAmy is a former editor and insurance authority at NerdWallet. She has been helping consumers understand insurance choices and terminology for almost 20 years.
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MORE LIKE THIS Auto Insurance Policies & Coverage Insurance Auto Insurance MORE LIKE THIS Auto Insurance Policies & Coverage Insurance Auto InsuranceLooking up complaints against an insurance company before you apply for a policy can tell you a lot, and it might even affect your decision.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners collects complaint data on insurers from the states and shares that information on its website. You can find out how a company’s complaints compare with other insurers that are about the same size, and what the complaints are about.
Complaints on the NAIC’s site include:
Auto insurance, for personal (private passenger) or commercial use Homeowners insurance Life insurance, either individual or group policies Health insurance, either individual plans or group insurance through an employerHere’s how to find complaints about an insurer.
Under the “Insurance Type” dropdown, select the type of insurance you’re looking to find complaints information for, such as “auto,” “homeowers,” or “life.”Using “all” can return a lot of extra results, so it’s best to be specific here.
The site may show you several companies with similar names. Here are some tips for figuring out the correct company name:
For an insurer you already use, find the specific subsidiary name on one of your policy documentsThe NAIC lists a state for each subsidiary’s head office. The correct subsidiary on the list should have the same state as the address for your insurer on the policy documents or on its website.
Some insurers publish their NAIC company numbers on their websites. That should match a number listed in your search results.
When you find the subsidiary name you want, you can look at its complaint list. The NAIC has multiple report options. The most useful will likely be the Complaint Code Report.
To find the report, select the “Click for Report Options” link and then “Go to Complaints Code Report.”
You can choose what how you’d like to view complaints, including by:
Type of coverage. Reason for complaint. Disposition (what happened with the complaints).From there, you can filter your results further:
Click the “I want to see complaints for” dropdown and select your state or “All” if you want a national report.
Select “Insured” from the “I want to see complaints submitted by the following” dropdown. Choose the year you want to see complaints from by using the “Year’ dropdown.Choosing last year’s report will give you a recent, full year’s worth of data and a better idea of common complaints than using the current year.
Your state’s department of insurance may also have complaint data available by year. A NerdWallet study ranks state insurance departments based on how helpful they are. You can navigate to your state within that page to learn if it provides complaint information online and click through to your state insurance department website. You can also file a complaint of your own with your state insurance department or check whether insurers and agents are licensed.
In addition to providing insurer-specific complaint ratios and counts, the NAIC also publishes snapshots of the most common complaints for the industry overall. The three reports are:
Disposition , or what happened with the complaints.Across insurance types, the top complaints involve:
Delays in handling claims Denied claims Unsatisfactory claim settlement offersOther common complaints are for problems such as:
Insurers canceling policies or not renewing them Surcharges Premiums or billing Questions that are answered inadequately, delayed or never answered at all Requests for refunds About the authorYou’re following Lacie Glover
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Lacie Glover is an insurance editor and writer and a NerdWallet authority on insurance. Her work has been featured by USA Today, U.S. News and World Report and The Associated Press. See full bio.
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