Click below for the full 2024 Marketplace Report document, which includes appendices and additional explanation.

Data for Independent Agents

This report is written to be consistent with the member agent's view of the insurance world.  Unlike industry watchers of insurer profitability and insolvency, direct written premiums are used—not net written premiums. The latter is typically used by the industry press and includes reinsurance and inter-company transfers. While useful in that context, net written premiums can cloud the picture of the independent agent's experience in the marketplace.

The source of the data presented is A.M. Best and its Financial Suite, a system that offers a view of industry data via various industry and custom reports. In this report for you, standard industry reports and customized reports are combined and manipulated to arrive at the various agent-focused presentations of data. A.M. Best obtains this data on individual insurers from the required filings with state regulators. You may be familiar with the term "Yellow Book" for the annual statement required to be made by p-c insurers with their primary regulator. Historically, insurers in different insurance categories had a designated color to make their reports—such as yellow for p-c or blue for life.

Reading the Data

An aspect of insurer required filings is the required delineation of data by “Lines of Business" (LOBs).  These LOBs are standardized for all insurers. LOBs are also often grouped by similar LOBs as they are tracked as part of annual statements. As some LOBs are overly specific (for example, automobile physical damage is separate from automobile liability), it is logical to combine some of these lines. In other cases, the individual lines are so small they have been combined with other smaller lines in the results. In all cases, the goal of this summary is to present the LOBs data to align with insurance agency operations, marketing strategies or staff assignments.

For the most significant LOBs, five years of premiums and adjusted loss ratios is provided with all Nebraska premiums written in the state contrasted with premiums written through insurers using independent agents. The designation of an insurer as using independent agents is as determined by A.M. Best.  Total premiums for the LOB in the state is dark blue and the independent agent portion of those premiums is show in light blue.  Loss ratios for the LOB are show in red.  It should be noted that the loss ratios shown are adjusted calendar year loss ratios.  That means for each LOB the losses used in the ratio of losses to earned premiums are the paid losses that year, any estimates of losses that will be paid from claims that year (also known as "reserves") plus any changes in "reserves" from prior years.  The "adjusted" part is if dividends are paid out under an LOB, the loss ratio is adjusted for that cost.