The world's largest property and casualty insurers, 2025

The Progressive Corp. is now the world's fourth-largest property and casualty insurer by revenue after its gross premiums earned surged more than 20% in 2024, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence's 2025 rankings.

Progressive wrote $12.9 billion more net premium in 2024 than it did in 2023, with the majority of that growth coming from adding policyholders as opposed to rate increases.

Last year's fourth-placed insurer, The People's Insurance Co. (Group) of China Ltd. fell to sixth place in 2024, behind the Lloyd's of London marketplace, after its insurance service revenue increased by a modest 6.1%.

Progressive's rise up the ranks underlines the fact that it is gaining ground on State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the market leader in US private auto, and the largest property and casualty (P&C) insurance underwriter in the world. State Farm stayed atop the rankings with $103.10 billion of direct premiums earned in 2024, up 17.7% year over year.

Growth continues

Strong revenue growth was a feature at most of the top 50 P&C insurers. Collectively, the group boosted its revenues by 8.3% to $1.62 trillion in 2024 from $1.50 trillion in 2023. Only two of the top 50 companies, Nationwide Mutual Group and American International Group Inc., reported revenue declines.

Nationwide's 9.1% drop can partly be explained by an 8.3% reduction in the net earned premiums of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., which makes up the largest part of the group. The reduction was seen across standard commercial, personal lines, excess and surplus, and specialty, and was the result of "intentional underwriting actions," according to the company's statutory annual filing for 2024.

AIG's premium decrease was mainly caused by the company selling parts of its P&C business. The company completed its sale of crop insurance agent Crop Risk Services to American Financial Group Inc. in July 2023, sold reinsurer Validus Re to RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. in November 2023, and shipped off travel insurance business to Zurich Insurance Group AG in December 2024. Adjusted for these sales, AIG's general insurance net premiums written for the year would have increased 6%, the insurer said in its fourth-quarter 2024 earnings release.

The Validus Re acquisition contributed to RenaissanceRe being the fastest growing of the top 50 P&C insurers in 2024 in percentage terms, with 31.1% year-over-year growth in gross premiums earned. RenaissanceRe was outside the top 50 in last year's iteration of these rankings, but placed 44th this time around.

Fuel for mergers

While revenue expansion was a feature of this year's top 50, growth slowed down slightly. The top 50 P&C insurers in last year's rankings collectively achieved an 8.9% increase in revenue compared to the prior year.

Growing organically is getting more difficult in many parts of the industry as the prices companies can charge for coverage fall amid growing competition. Global commercial insurance rates started declining in the third quarter of 2024, according to insurance broker Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index. Since then, the pace of decline has accelerated. Prices fell 4% in the second quarter after falling 3% in the first, according to Marsh.

Prices for reinsurance, a key contributor to revenue growth in 2024's top 50 P&C insurers, have also been sliding. Rates on line for property-catastrophe reinsurance were down 8% at the Jan. 1 renewals and fell 10% at the June 1 renewals, according to reports from reinsurance broker Howden Re.

At the same time, the industry remains well capitalized. Falling prices make it more difficult for insurers and reinsurers to deploy capital in underwriting profitably, and returning capital to shareholders through share buybacks and special dividends can only go so far. This typically leads to more companies looking for acquisitions.

Following a lull, there has been a resurgence in mergers and acquisitions of P&C carriers. Deals have included Belgian insurance group ageas SA/NV's acquisition of UK personal lines insurer esure Group PLC and Radian Group Inc.'s planned purchase of Lloyd's insurer Inigo Ltd. A further source of M&A activity is Japanese insurers, which are flush with cash after selling cross-shareholdings and are keen to expand outside their home market, as demonstrated by Sompo Holdings Inc.'s pending acquisition of Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd.

"There's still actually lots out there to be acquired, and so I think the M&A market will be active," Waleed Jabsheh, CEO of insurer and reinsurer International General Insurance Holdings Ltd., said in a September interview. "The extent of it and how desperate the market becomes for M&A, I think, will depend on how quickly the market softens."

Companies are ranked by 2024 property and casualty gross premiums earned or IFRS 17 insurance service revenues where available. Property and casualty gross premiums written, net premiums written, net premiums earned, or statutory direct premiums written are used respectively when a company did not report gross premiums earned. Gross premiums earned is more comparable with IFRS 17's insurance service revenues.

Premiums are converted to US dollars at the average currency exchange rate for each respective fiscal year. Analysis is a best-efforts basis limited to public insurance companies around the world and nonpublic insurance companies in North America and Europe.

Access an Excel spreadsheet with information about the top 50 global property and casualty insurers. Also, read S&P Global Market Intelligence's analysis on the world's largest life insurers.

Profits holding

If lower prices and higher competition are squeezing underwriting profitability, it was not evident at the world's biggest carriers. The average loss ratio in the 2025 rankings is 64.3%, compared with 66.8% the previous year, indicating a slight improvement. No companies in the 2025 rankings had a loss ratio above 80%, while there were six the previous year.

This is despite 2024 being a more normal year for natural catastrophe losses after a relatively quiet 2023. Insured natural catastrophe losses were $137 billion in 2024, up from $115 billion in 2023.

A lot of the US P&C market's current underwriting results are being driven by better performance in personal auto, which makes up a large portion of overall premiums, according to James Eck, senior credit officer of Moody's Ratings. After a couple of years with a sectorwide combined ratio above the 100% break-even mark, "they've gotten that under control at this point," with an expected sector combined ratio in the mid-90s, Eck said in an interview.

"From that perspective, the US P&C sector is in a much better place," Eck said.

US homeowners' and commercial property insurers, faced with retaining more risk because of higher reinsurance attachment points, "have done a lot ... more risk management and pricing on the front end," Eck said.