Auto insurance prices are finally easing in 2026. But a new JD Power study shows that carriers are losing ground on a different front: the customer experience.
Overall satisfaction held steady at 644 on a 1,000-point scale, unchanged year over year. Price satisfaction edged up three points as fewer customers (30%) reported insurer-initiated premium increases.
When increases do happen, the damage is significant. Satisfaction with price for coverage drops 155 points to 486 among customers who received a carrier-initiated increase.
The study’s central finding is about friction, rather than price. A seamless cross-channel experience is now the single most impactful driver of satisfaction. Yet insurers are consistently failing to deliver it.
Nearly half of customers (46%) used more than one interaction channel in the past 12 months. This alone does not hurt satisfaction. What hurts is being forced to switch channels to resolve a single inquiry. Some 21% of customers reported this experience, and those who did were significantly less likely to renew.
Agents resolve 91% of cross-channel inquiries once engaged. The website resolves just 66%. This gap points to where the experience is breaking down.
Stephen Crewdson, managing director of insurance business intelligence at JD Power, said the market has moved past its pricing problem into something harder to fix.
“Rates are stabilizing, but many customers still say their interactions aren’t seamless – especially when they must switch channels to resolve a single inquiry – even as a seamless cross-channel experience has become the single-most impactful driver of satisfaction in the study,” he said.
The channel pressure sits against a broader shift in how customers shop. Nearly half of new auto policies (48%) are now bought online, up from 36% five years ago. Customers are also pulling an average of 3.5 quotes, the most in the study’s 20-year history.
The annual shop rate hit a record 47.3%. Carriers that cannot deliver a clean digital experience are losing customers before the conversation even begins.
Only 58% of customers say they fully understand their auto policy, down four percentage points from 2025. Among those who do understand their policy, overall satisfaction runs 127 points higher than among those who do not.
Roughly one-third of shoppers (32%) used AI tools during their search. A similar share, 33%, found the results unhelpful. Those who used AI were more than 1.3 times as likely to switch insurers compared with non-AI users.
Consumer comfort with AI is growing fast. A February 2026 survey of more than 1,000 US adults found that 84% now use AI tools at least occasionally.
In insurance, 39% said it is a good idea for their insurer to use AI to improve services, nearly double the 20% who said so in 2025. Carriers that ignore that shift risk ceding the customer relationship to tools they do not control.
Crewdson said the AI trend points to a communication failure: “When insurers fail to clearly explain coverage, customers turn to AI to fill knowledge gaps and shift control of information away from carriers.”
Erie Insurance topped three regions in the study: Mid-Atlantic (704), North Central (688), and Southeast (691). Amica led New England (702) for a third consecutive year. Nationwide topped the usage-based insurance category (711), also for a third consecutive year.
