A crowdsource rating website for insurance carriers will soon be expanded to include public ratings and rankings for insurance agencies too.
Clearsurance is the first insurance-specific, crowdsourced ratings website. The site has logged more than 50,000 reviews on its platform from more than 350 different personal lines insurance carriers since its launch last year.
Co-founder Todd Kozikowski said it’s almost the agencies’ turn. Cleasurance aims to have reviews and rating available for independent agencies “within the coming year.”
“There is evidence today that points out that what crowdsourcing has done to other industries – it has elevated levels of service,” he said. “We felt like, with insurance, it’s very confusing. We wanted to open up a sense of transparency and help consumers make smarter insurance decisions. One of the best ways to do that is through crowdsourcing.”
For Kozikowski, creating greater transparency around insurance companies – and holding service to account openly and publicly – came with some personal perspective.
As a child, his parents lost their family home during a construction calamity, and all of the insurance carriers and agents passed the buck and the family lost out. So when the opportunity arose to create a startup that would show the good versus the bad carriers, he jumped at it.
The site, though, is now as much about transparency as it is a way for insurers and their customers to connect.
The site encourages customers to offer feedback and ratings for every step of the insurance process – from when customers first learn about a product and buy it, through claims, to when they want to review – which gives a fairer rating than some other crowdsourced ratings sites, which are often loaded with negative reviews of only poor customer experiences.
The response from carriers has been appreciative, Kozikowski said.
“The feedback from carriers has been incredible,” he noted. “Today we have over 350 carriers that are rated and reviewed in the platform. And over 125 of those companies have engaged with us in some capacity – they’re monitoring their reviews or have now claimed their company profile.”
Many carriers are now promoting the review capability through their own marketing material, he said.
“Carriers want to engage their customers because they know we live in a five-star world,” he explained. “Customers are buying reviews before they buy anything, and it’s no different with insurance.”
Here are the
Top 5 Overall Rated Auto Insurance Carriers according to consumers’ reviews on clearsurance.com. They used a benchmark of at least 250 car insurance reviews per carrier to create this list.
1. USAA
2. Erie Insurance Group
3. AAA
4.
State Farm
5. Geico
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