June 4, 2026
The NAIC complaint index, explained
Every review on this site leans on one number: the NAIC complaint index. It's the closest thing American insurance has to an objective customer-treatment score — compiled by regulators, not reviewers, and immune to the five-star inflation of checkout-experience ratings.
It's also routinely misread. Here's exactly what the index measures, how to pull it yourself for free, and the gaps to know before treating it as gospel.
What the index measures
When a policyholder believes an insurer mishandled them — delayed a claim, lowballed a settlement, denied without explanation — they can file a formal complaint with their state insurance department. States investigate, close the complaint, and report confirmed complaints to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).
The NAIC then adjusts for size, because a giant insurer will always log more raw complaints than a small one. The index is the insurer's share of complaints divided by its share of premium:
- 1.00 — exactly the complaints expected for its market share
- 2.00 — twice the expected complaints
- 0.50 — half the expected complaints
- Example from our own data pull: NEXT Insurance's 2025 index of 1.63 means 63% more complaints than its premium share predicts (9 closed-confirmed complaints against $357M premium, pulled from NAIC CIS 4 June 2026)
How to look up any insurer, free
The NAIC's Consumer Information Source (CIS) at cis.naic.org is public and free. The workflow:
- Search the insurer's name — the catch is brands vs legal entities: search "Next Insurance" and you want *Next Insurance US Company* (every insurer has an NAIC company code; NEXT's is 16285)
- Open the Closed Complaints report — the dashboard shows the complaint index by year (2023–2025 currently available)
- Filter by policy type — "Commercial Liability" and "Commercial Property" are the lines that matter for business insurance; an insurer can be clean on auto and ugly on commercial lines (Progressive is the textbook case: praised personal-auto numbers, ~3x expected complaints on its commercial book per MoneyGeek's 2026 analysis)
- Check the trend, not one year — a single bad year can be noise at small premium volumes; three rising years is a pattern
What counts as a complaint (and what doesn't)
The index counts closed, confirmed complaints filed with state regulators — not angry tweets, not one-star reviews, not calls to the insurer's own line. That's its strength and its bias: filing a regulator complaint takes effort, so the people who do it overwhelmingly believe a claim or cancellation was mishandled. The index is, in effect, a *claims-gone-wrong* detector — which is exactly why we pair it with review-theme analysis rather than replacing one with the other.
The limitations — including the MGA gap
Three things the index can't tell you:
- The MGA/broker gap. Brands like Thimble, Coterie and Simply Business don't underwrite — complaints attach to the carriers behind them (Markel, Employers, Spinnaker…), so the brand you bought from has no index at all. Any site quoting a complaint index *for* those brands is making a category error.
- Small-volume noise. An insurer with little premium in a line can swing from 0.5 to 3.0 on a handful of complaints. Check the underlying counts, not just the ratio.
- Lag. Indices are published per calendar year, so a deteriorating (or improving) insurer shows up 6–18 months late. Pair the index with current review themes for the leading edge.
How we use it
Every insurer review on this site leads with the complaint index where one exists, dated, with the entity and line named — and says "no index" loudly where one doesn't. The full rules, including what we refuse to publish, are in our methodology. If your insurer mistreated a claim, filing with your state insurance department (linked on every location page) is what makes this data exist.
Common questions
What is a good NAIC complaint index?
Below 1.00 means fewer complaints than expected for the insurer's size — The Hartford's 0.74–0.81 (2022–24) is an example of a genuinely good commercial-lines record. Above 1.5 deserves scrutiny; around 3.0 (Progressive's commercial lines, 2026 analysis) is a documented pattern.
Where do I find the NAIC complaint index for an insurer?
The NAIC Consumer Information Source (cis.naic.org) — free, no account needed. Search the legal entity (not just the brand name), open the closed-complaints report, and filter to the policy type you're buying.
Why does my insurer have no complaint index?
Most likely it's not an insurer — MGAs and brokers (Thimble, Coterie, Simply Business) sell policies underwritten by other companies, and complaints attach to those underwriting carriers. Look up the carrier named in your policy documents instead.
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Disclosure: some links to insurers may be affiliate links — if you get a quote through them we may earn a commission, at no cost to you. That never changes the data: complaint figures, ratings and review themes are reported as published, sources cited and dated. We are not an insurance agent or broker, and nothing here is advice. How we score