Shopping for auto insurance declined in the second quarter of 2026 even as more policyholders who did shop went on to switch carriers, according to JD Power's Loyalty Indicator & Shopping Trends (LIST) report, produced with TransUnion.
The data points to a market where affordability, not curiosity, is increasingly driving which customers move and which stay put.
Auto insurance shopping fell to 12.6% in the second quarter, down 1.0 point from Q1 and 0.4 points year over year. Switching rose to 4.5%, up 0.3 points both quarter over quarter and year over year.
Among customers who switched, the median premium moving between carriers exceeded $3,200, suggesting the amounts at stake are substantial when policyholders do act. Monthly data showed auto shopping cooled beginning in April, spiked briefly in May, then fell again in June, while switching peaked in May before easing.
Home insurance shopping rose 0.6 points year over year to 7.1%, even as it slipped 0.3 points from the first quarter, with switching up 0.3 points quarter over quarter to 2.5%. Renters shopping rose 0.4 points year over year to 6.3% but slipped slightly against the first quarter, while switching fell 0.8 points year over year to 3.4% even as it rose 0.4 points from the prior quarter.
State Farm led on both home and renters quotes and new business through bundling, per the report's loyalty tracker.
Regional farm bureau insurers, along with Erie and USAA, posted the highest auto loyalty, while Direct Auto, Root, Alfa, The General and National General saw the highest defection.
In home insurance, farm bureau carriers again led alongside NJM and Universal P&C, while Alfa, National General, Grange, Nationwide and Liberty Mutual saw the most customers leave. Renters loyalty leaders included The Hartford, Lemonade and State Farm, while Nationwide, CSAA, Farmers and ACSC saw higher defection.
JD Power framed the underlying dynamic as a shift from a price-driven shopping surge toward an affordability-driven retention challenge. Shopping remains elevated across auto and property lines, but growth has begun to level off, with shopper behavior converging across credit tiers, suggesting the market may be past peak shopping intensity.
The report distinguishes between two groups of consumers. Those with greater financial flexibility keep actively shopping for better value, while financially constrained consumers, particularly younger drivers, appear more likely to reduce coverage or let policies lapse rather than shop for a better rate. JD Power characterized this as evidence that retention risk is evolving from a price-driven switching issue into a broader challenge centered on affordability and coverage persistence.
That pattern echoes separate industry data. LexisNexis Risk Solutions reported that overall auto insurance shopping growth cooled from "hot" to "warm" in the first quarter of 2026, with non-standard auto shoppers, typically most sensitive to affordability pressure, posting negative quarterly growth for the first time since late 2023.
Read alongside JD Power's finding on lapsing drivers, both datasets point toward the same risk: a growing pool of drivers exiting the insured market rather than switching carriers, with direct implications for state uninsured motorist rates and residual market volumes. For brokers, that shift is worth raising proactively rather than waiting for a claim to surface it: a client who lets coverage lapse or trims limits to manage cost is also more likely to be underinsured against an uninsured or underinsured motorist, making it worth confirming that protection sits at an adequate level even when a client is cutting costs elsewhere in their policy.
The report also previewed early findings from JD Power's forthcoming AI Insurance Experience Study, due August 25. Among consumers who used AI to research insurance products in the past six months, usage split almost evenly between insurer-provided tools and third-party AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini -- 34% used an insurer's site or app, 33% used a third-party AI tool, and 14% spoke with an AI agent through an insurer's call center, while 32% had not used AI tools at all.
Reliance on the guidance varied. Only 19% said they followed AI guidance exactly, 49% followed some of it, 26% considered it but decided differently, and 6% did not trust or use it. Despite that skepticism, 37% of consumers who used AI-assisted research tools said they changed their policy as a result.
That level of reliance lands as US regulators sharpen scrutiny of AI in insurance. The NAIC's Model Bulletin on AI systems, adopted in December 2023, had reached roughly 25 states and DC by mid-2026, with California, Colorado, New York and Texas operating under their own frameworks.
The NAIC is also piloting a structured AI Systems Evaluation Tool across a dozen states through September 2026 to standardize how examiners review insurer AI governance. That framework targets insurer-side systems rather than the third-party tools JD Power's data captures, but the finding that more than a third of AI-assisted shoppers changed their policy based on outside guidance is likely to sharpen regulatory attention on how consumers are influenced earlier in the shopping journey.
