Worst Car Insurance Companies for Paying Claims: How to Check Any Insurer Yourself
By Richard P. Pravato, Board Certified in Civil Trial Law Published October 14, 2026
Your car insurance claim has sat still for three weeks. The adjuster stopped calling back, the estimate is still “under review”, and you start to wonder whether this company is just known for it.
It may be. There is a famous ranking of the worst car insurance companies in America, and most lists online copy it. Three different people go looking for it: somebody checking the company they picked, somebody hit by a driver whose insurer has a bad name, and somebody about to switch. The answer is different for each.
By the end you will know which companies get named, which of them can affect your claim, how to pull any insurer's complaint record before you buy, and what Florida law gives you when a company will not pay. I am Richard P. Pravato, Board Certified in Civil Trial Law, and car accident claims are the only work I have taken since 1996.
Key takeaways
- Almost every ranking of the worst car insurance companies comes from one report, put out by the American Association for Justice in July 2008.
- Five of the ten companies that report named do not sell car insurance. They sell disability, long-term care, health and life coverage.
- The driver who hits you picks the company that decides your payout, and there is no way around that.
- Your own company still decides two things worth checking before you buy, and a complaint record is how you check them.
- Florida keeps a public record of every formal bad faith notice filed against an insurer, and anyone can search it for free.
Which car insurance companies are worst at paying claims
The names on nearly every worst car insurance companies list are Allstate, State Farm, Farmers, Liberty Mutual, AIG, Progressive, GEICO, Nationwide and USAA, and most of those lists copy one ranking from 2008.
That ranking is not ours, and this post does not make one. What follows is where it came from and what it is worth.
Start with where it came from. The American Association for Justice, the national group for trial lawyers, published The Ten Worst Insurance Companies in America in July 2008, built from court files, federal records, state investigations and sworn testimony from former adjusters. Allstate came first.
That report also put a phrase into wide use. Several insurers had hired the same consultants, and the report says they came out of it running claims on delay, deny and defend: hold the file, refuse payment, make the customer sue.
Here is the part the copied lists drop. Half the names on it do not sell car insurance at all. Unum sells disability coverage, Conseco sold long-term care plans, WellPoint and UnitedHealth are health insurers, Torchmark sold life and burial plans. The report says so itself: its list spans home, auto, health, life and disability companies.
So treat it as history, not a score, and the same goes for every best and worst car insurance companies list built on it. It is eighteen years old, it never ranked the worst auto insurance companies for paying claims, and it says nothing about a Florida crash in 2026.
The driver who hits you picks the company that pays you
This is the part that catches people out, and it matters more than any ranking. The driver who hits you picks the company that decides your payout. Not you. There is no way around it.
If somebody with a bad insurer hits you, that is the insurer you deal with. You cannot switch it and you cannot shop around it.
So the question splits in two. For the claim you are in now, the other driver's company is the one that counts. For the policy you buy next, your own record matters. Here is where.
What your own insurance still decides
Your own company decides two things after a crash, and both are worth checking before you sign with anyone.
The first is the no-fault coverage every Florida car policy carries, called Personal Injury Protection. It pays your first medical bills no matter who caused the crash, so a slow company here means slow treatment. Florida Statute 627.736(4)(b) makes that money overdue if it is not paid within 30 days of written notice, and a late payment owes you interest. Our guide to extended injury protection covers what the basic policy leaves out.
The second is uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, which you also choose. It answers when the driver who hit you carried almost nothing, and then your own company is the one deciding your payout. That is the one case where picking well protects you directly.
How to check an insurance company's complaint record yourself
If you are shopping, this is the part to use. Here is how to pull the real numbers. Every state regulator sends its closed complaints to the national body that state insurance chiefs run together, and that body puts them online company by company, free, in a tool called the Consumer Information Source.
Type in a name. You can read the complaints against it by state, by kind of insurance, and for the past three years rather than for 2008, split by what people complained about. Delay complaints read differently from billing fights.
One number does the comparing for you. A big insurer draws more complaints than a small one, so the count is scaled against how much business it writes. That lets you compare two companies of different sizes, and it is the honest way to ask which insurance company has the most complaints. It will not tell you which insurance company pays out the most claims, because nobody publishes that.
What Florida records when an insurance company will not pay
Florida keeps a second record almost nobody outside this work knows about. Before anyone sues a Florida insurer over how it ran a claim, they must file a written notice with the state, which goes into the Department of Financial Services Civil Remedy system. Every civil remedy notice Florida collects is public, searchable by anyone without an account.
The form is why it is useful. Each notice picks a reason, and four are about claims going wrong: claim denial, claim delay, an unsatisfactory settlement offer, and unfair trade practice. It also has to set out the facts and quote the policy wording.
Read one and you are reading what a real person says a real insurer did to them. Read a run against the same company and the pattern is hard to miss. No official list ranks insurance companies by bad faith, so this is the nearest thing to naming the insurance companies that deny the most claims here. Each is one person's accusation, not a ruling.
What counts as an insurance company acting in bad faith in Florida
Florida does not ask an insurance company to be generous, only to deal honestly. The Florida bad faith statute, Florida Statute 624.155(1)(b), lets you sue an insurer that does not attempt in good faith to settle a claim “when, under all the circumstances, it could and should have done so”. So a lowball offer alone is not bad faith. Refusing to pay what the company could plainly see it owed is.
Getting there runs through the notice above. Filing it is a condition of suing at all, and once the insurer has it the company gets 60 days to pay or put the problem right. That ends the matter.
Three things changed when House Bill 837 was signed on March 24 that year. A company facing a claim against its driver can now shut the door by paying the policy limits, or the sum asked for, within 90 days of a claim backed by real proof. Mere negligence is no longer enough on its own. And you carry a duty too: deal dishonestly over facts, demands or deadlines and a jury may cut your damages for it. Our explainer on how Florida splits fault covers the rest.
What to do when car insurance denies a claim or stalls it
A phone call you cannot prove happened is worth nothing. Four habits beat most insurance company tactics, and none costs a cent.
- Put requests in writing by email, with a date you want an answer by. A delay becomes a record instead of a feeling.
- Ask for any denial or cut in writing, with the policy wording behind it. A reason that will not survive being written down often changes.
- Keep a log of calls: date, name, what was said. Cheapest proof there is.
- Wait before you give a recorded statement or sign a medical release. Our piece on recorded statement requests explains why.
Do not treat a first offer as a verdict. It is an opening number from the side paying the bill, and dealing with an adjuster is a haggle whether anyone says so or not.
How we move an insurer that will not pay
What changes a company's mind is a consequence with a date on it. A client of ours was riding his e-bike in Boca Raton when an SUV turned across him and tore his shoulder. Fault was not in doubt, and the carrier still refused its $250,000 limits. We filed suit, and when it kept holding out we served a formal offer, the kind that puts the insurer on the hook for our costs if a jury beats it. It paid every dollar.
We read the policy, build the medical record, and put the demands in writing. When a file needs the 60 day notice, we file it.
Questions people ask me about insurance companies and claims
The driver who hit me has a company with a terrible reputation. Am I in trouble?
Its reputation is not the thing to watch. What decides your claim is how much coverage that driver bought and what your records prove. A slow company costs you time, not the claim.
Should I switch carriers over a bad claims record?
Check the complaint record above first. Then look at your uninsured motorist limits, because that is what your own company pays out on, and most people carry too little.
How long do I have to bring a Florida injury claim?
Two years from the crash, under Florida Statute 95.11(5)(a), cut from four by the 2023 law. Waiting on a slow insurer is how that deadline gets missed.
Before you accept what an insurer says your claim is worth
Wolf & Pravato represents injured people across Florida, from offices in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, West Palm Beach, Boynton Beach and Fort Myers. If a car insurance company is sitting on your claim, or has priced it below what your records support, bring us the file.
Request a free case review. There is no fee unless we win money for you.
This article is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and every claim turns on its own facts and evidence. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
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