NFU Mutual tops motor insurance customer satisfaction ranking

NFU Mutual and John Lewis have the happiest motor insurance customers, according to market research firm Consumer Intelligence.

Other companies consistently in the top group for customer satisfaction include Co-operative Insurance, M&S, LV=, Saga and Sainsbury’s.

The satisfaction rankings are based on net promoter scores, which show how likely a customer would be to recommend their insurer to friends or relatives.

Consumer Intelligence also found that customer satisfaction with motor insurers overall is improving – though still at a low level. The overall result for the motor insurance market is a positive score of 3.1%, which the research firm says is at its highest point for the past three years.

A positive score indicates that the number of people willing to recommend their insurer outweighs the number who would criticise their insurer to friends and family.

The overall score is based on the net promoter score for 47 insurance companies.

The data shows the number of companies achieving a positive score has risen consistently over the three years. In 2012 only 22 out of the 47  had positive scores, while in 2014 that number rose to 33.

But Consumer Intelligence noted that there was a wide divergence in scores given to individual companies. Some are excelling, with one company achieving a positive score of 52.7%.

But others are getting it “very, very wrong” and have ended up with a negative score of 23.3%.

Consumer Intelligence chief executive Ian Hughes said: “The improvements have been across the board with those companies which have regularly achieved high satisfaction levels seeing gains in their scores while those at the bottom have also improved.

“The consistent message from customers is that they would prefer to develop a relationship with an insurer than switch and customer satisfaction plays a major part of that.”