The Texas Department of Insurance publishes as an annual index of complaints filed against auto insurance companies doing businesss in Texas. It lists each insurance company, shows the total number of complaints that are filed against it that year, the total number of auto insurance policies in effect, and an index to show how each company compares to the others in the number of complaints.
The index number basically gives a way to compare a company that has one auto insurance policy to another company that has 20,000. So a company with an index of 1.0 is average. A company with an index of 0.5 has half the number of complaints than the average company. A company with an index of 5.0 has five times the number of complaints as the average company.
For example, Allstate Insurance Company has an index of 2.18. So they have twice the number of complaints as the average auto insurer in Texas. Farmers Insurance Exchange has an index of 4.23, or four times the expected number of complaints. Kemper Independent Insurance Company has an index of 8.72, or eight times the expected number of complaints. Nationwide Property & Casualty Insurance Company has an index of 5.54, or five times the expected number of complaints.