The best carrier websites in auto insurance revealed

Did Flo outperform the gecko, or “Jake from State Farm?” This tech company ranked auto insurers in terms of website functionality.

Motor & Fleet

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Mobile and desktop technology have only continued to grow in importance when it comes to consumer selection of an insurance provider. And, according to a new “scorecard” from technology consultant Keynote, there are a few insurers leading the pack in that respect.

Progressive achieved its 16th consecutive win in the “overall” category in Keynote’s bi-annual industry ranking. Meant to help insurers measure their technological prowess against their competition, Keynote’s scorecard measures the websites of the top 11 US carriers against 300-plus metrics divided into four categories: functionality, quality and availability, privacy and security and ease of use.

Progressive took first place in three of these four divisions, including the important “get insurance” task component of the functionality category.

Susan Folds, lead analyst for Keynote’s scorecard program, attributed Progressive’s continued success to its strong focus on mobile capabilities and desktop staples.

“There’s really no one thing—they just clearly offer a lot of functionality and follow a lot of our ‘ease of use’ best practices that when you take them all together, you have a winning website,” Folds explained. “Mobile is clearly their major focus these days, and Progressive allows you to do things like report a crash, send photos and look for authorized service providers. Their desktop quoting tool is also quite robust.”

Progressive’s online quote tool allows prospective consumers to input a budget, which the tool then converts to suggested insurance packages.

GEICO took second place in this installment of Keynote’s scorecard, while Nationwide and Liberty Mutual tied for third. GEICO achieved high marks for privacy and security, while Liberty Mutual took second for ease of use and Nationwide was first in quality and availability.

Other carriers ranked included Travelers, State Farm, The Hartford, Farmers, eSurance, Allstate and 21st Century.
However, Folds noted that it isn’t just large carriers leading the way in the technology space.

“The largest firms have the biggest budgets for things like this, but we do also see a lot of innovation among the smaller regionals as well,” she said.

While the scorecard is meant as an industry-facing metric, Folds said that both consumers and agents can take something away from Keynote’s findings.

“Obviously having easy access through digital channels is paramount these days, whether you’re an agent or the end user,” Folds said. “So, if somebody’s doing a good job in those channels—and mobile, especially—then that’s good for agent’s customers and I would assume it’s good for agents, too.”

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