Do we like them?

Do we like Progressive?

US car insurer (also home, bike and commercial cover), based in Mayfield Village, Ohio.

Our score: 5 out of 10. A well-run insurer with a record of paying settlements over underpaid total-loss claims. We'd back it with mixed feelings: it's competent, but its claims practices have drawn repeated lawsuits.

Progressive is one of America's big car insurers, run from Ohio. Tricia Griffith has been CEO since July 2016. She started in claims and is known for mixing data-heavy underwriting with a focus on staff and customers.

The main drama is total-loss payouts, when a car is written off. In 2024 Progressive agreed to pay $48 million to New York drivers who said they were underpaid. Plaintiffs pointed to a valuation adjustment in third-party software that they said cut payouts by about 6.5%. Progressive denies wrongdoing.

It didn't stop there. A separate $18.3 million settlement covered claims that sales tax was left out of payouts on totaled cars. Earlier, Progressive Direct agreed to pay $19.2 million over similar claims in Washington.

On the regulator side, the New York Department of Financial Services fined Progressive $189,000 over alleged violations from 2016 to 2017. That's small, but it adds to the claims-handling pattern.

Overall we see a capable, well-managed insurer whose habit of settling over how it pays claims holds it at the middle of the scale.