What the assistants say
PeakMetrics asked five assistants five category questions on 2026-09-28. None named a brand. On "Which car insurance companies have the best customer service?", all five answers named Erie and Amica. The answers leaned on J.D. Power studies, with NJM, USAA and American Family also recurring. This is a single snapshot of 25 answers, not a ranking.
The framing changed when the question turned negative. On "Which insurers are worst at paying claims?", Claude, Perplexity and Grok named State Farm, Allstate and Liberty Mutual, and ChatGPT named State Farm and Allstate. Claude added GEICO and Nationwide. Perplexity said there is no universal list because "different studies measure different things". Most of the naming was attributed to lists and studies rather than stated as the assistant's own finding.
On "Which insurance company should consumers avoid?", ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini declined to name a company. Perplexity and Grok did name companies. Perplexity's answer said Allstate was the name most often flagged in the sources it drew on. Grok's answer described the companies it listed as context only, "not a blacklist".
There is no single universal list of the “worst” insurers at paying claims, because different studies measure different things…
Who owns the answer, and why
State Farm was named in 13 of 25 answers, more than any other tracked brand. It appeared in every question except customer service. The answers credited it for Customer Experience and Financial Performance. Its financial-stability mentions came mostly through AM Best ratings and "most financially stable" lists.
Allstate (8 answers), Progressive (7), GEICO (7) and Liberty Mutual (7) sit in a second tier. Customer Experience was the most common credit for all four. Grok carried much of that naming: it named Allstate in 4 of 5 answers, and Progressive, GEICO and Liberty Mutual in 3 each. Gemini named none of the four. Nationwide was named in only 4 answers.
The names that led the service and trust answers fall outside the brand set supplied here. These are Erie, Amica, NJM, USAA, American Family and Travelers. Any brand that wants to be in the service conversation is competing with them, not only with the national carriers.
There isn’t one insurance company that everyone should avoid.
What the press is covering
PeakMetrics news-index headlines for the past 30 days mostly do not concern service, trust or claims. State Farm had 9,563 mentions and the most headline-level attention among the claims-relevant stories. Recent headlines cover a $5B return to customers and a California lawsuit over wildfire claims. One State Farm headline is a tender notice for an unrelated agricultural enterprise.
Allstate (7,729 mentions) is covered largely through stock and earnings items, plus a roofing company that shares the name. Progressive (9,446) is covered through share transactions, a CEO stock sale and several unrelated "Progressive" entities. GEICO (1,952) is in sponsorship and agency-distribution stories, including a jersey patch and a parade debut. Liberty Mutual (1,906) appears in a General Mills coverage dispute, a suit over a damaged shipment and a college football sponsorship. Nationwide logged 30,881 mentions, but the sampled headlines mostly use the word as an adverb, so that count is not a clean measure of brand coverage.
There isn’t one insurer that is objectively “the most trustworthy” for everyone.
Where the two stories diverge
The press volume and the answer volume do not line up. Nationwide has the most news mentions of any brand here and was named in the fewest answers. State Farm has similar news volume to Progressive but was named in nearly twice as many answers. Name collisions inflate several of the news counts, so treat them as rough.
The subject matter also diverges. The answers are about service, complaints, claims handling and ratings. The sampled headlines for most brands are about stock, sponsorships and distribution. State Farm is the exception, where the California claims lawsuit headline sits close to the claims framing in the answers. This data cannot show whether one influenced the other.
What this means for comms teams
The answers drew heavily on review and comparison sites. Review & Affiliate domains made up 80% of cited domains and News 20%. The most cited were insurance.com (11), jdpower.com (6), insure.com (6), carinsurance.com (6) and thezebra.com (5). Forbes (5) was the top news domain. This covers corporate and reputational questions only. Press coverage alone would not reach most of what the assistants read.
Two practical points follow. First, service and trust answers were built on J.D. Power and complaint-index results, while financial-stability answers cited AM Best, S&P and Fitch rating actions. A team can check which of those sources describes its brand and whether the description is current. Second, the claims and avoid questions are where national brands get named. It is worth reading those answers for what is attributed to which list, since several assistants presented the names as products of third-party rankings.
Because live answers vary between runs, treat this as a baseline for benchmark questions to re-run, not as a result to act on.
