Allstate Insurance – Quick Overview
Company Type: Personal Insurance, Wealth Management and General Financial Services
Headquarters: Northbrook, Illinois
Founded: 1931
States Served: Nationwide (through affiliates and local offices) in all US states and Canada
Number of Policyholders: 16 million (in number of households)
Number of Employees: 70,000+
Corporate Office(s): Illinois
Allstate – a now household insurance company name — was a name that was actually picked through a contest launched by Sears to name their own brand of tires. However, Allstate moved on from just being a brand for Sears’ tires by starting to include other automobile services – they began offering automobile insurance through mail order catalogs before becoming one of the most insurers we know today.
Allstate did not just become one of the most popular insurers overnight though. It rode the success of the US automobile industry, and state laws were subsequently created because of this success. In the 1940’s, Allstate got a bigger hand in the market as more liability laws for auto insurance were created. Its name also became synonymous with other products, such as fire extinguishers and scooters, but the Allstate that we know of today is purely set on addressing the insurance needs of the greater American public.
Differentiating Allstate From Other Insurance Companies
Allstate created new business models and implemented other strategic changes within the company, the most apparent changes based on its corporate setup and its emancipation from the Sears’ brand.
Aside from these distinctions, Allstate is also one of the few companies that offer exclusive contracts to their insurance agents, ensuring that all policies they’re selling are under Allstate exclusively, rather than opting to allow insurance brokers – who sell insurance products for a variety of companies – to sell Allstate products. Thus, if a customer isn’t buying insurance directly through Allstate’s corporate extensions, like their websites, the only other way to buy Allstate products are through exclusive Allstate insurance agencies, like the local agencies one would see in their area.
Perhaps most importantly, despite the age of the internet and the wide use of online networks to connect insurance companies and policyholders, Allstate still adheres to the business practice of placing those exclusive Allstate agencies at carefully picked strategic locations around the US and Canada. In other words, if there’s an Allstate agency in your area, it wasn’t just thrown up for the sake of having a brick and mortar presence. It’s there because they identified a need and realize this business model has brought them great success and differentiated them from competitors.
Discounts Offered By Allstate Insurance
The following are the discounts on offer from Allstate:
Auto insurance discounts
- Multi-policy discount: Obtained if a policyholder carries homeowners or renters insurance and another Allstate insurance policy, such as auto insurance.
- Specific & Specialized Discounts: For example, if auto insurance is combined with an Allstate life insurance policy, a variation from standard insurers’ multi-policy discounts which often are only granted if two personal lines products (like homeowners or renters insurance combined with auto insurance) are both carried through Allstate.
- Good driver Discounts: For drivers with good driving records.
- Safety & Security Discounts: Available to policyholders who insure vehicles that have safety and/or anti-theft features.
- Advance Quote Discounts: Eligible for policyholders who buy a policy well in advance before the customer’s existing insurance policy with another insurer expires. Often this can also help ensure the policyholder will lock in the same premiums Allstate initially quoted them, provided that no major information was omitted in the quoting process and that all information received during the quote was accurate.
- Paperless Billing Discounts: Offered to those who opt for paperless billing – for those who either opt for receiving any document like bills or policy documents via email or online billing versus receiving them via snail mail.
- Automatic Payment/Full Premium Payment Discounts: Offered to policyholders who either opt for their insurance premiums to be automatically deducted from checking and savings accounts according to the terms policyholders opt for (like paying monthly or semi-monthly), or offering discounts to policyholders who pay their entire policy premiums in full for the entire policy terms, often either six months or annually.
Home Insurance discounts
- Multi-policy Discount: Obtained if a policyholder carries homeowners or renters insurance and another Allstate insurance policy, such as auto insurance.
- Specific & Specialized Homeowners Discounts: For example, discounts given when no smokers live in the insured home.
- Advance Quotes Discounts: For early homeowners insurance buyers, similarly to the advanced quote discount provided for auto insurance, and also given in various situations like new homeowners who buy insurance early on in the home buying process.
- Paperless Billing Discounts: This discount is identical to the same discount offered for auto insurance policyholders.
- Automatic Payment/Full Premium Payment Discounts: This discount, as explained in auto insurance discounts, is also available for homeowners insurance policyholders.
Consumer Ratings for Allstate
JD Powers
- Home Insurance (out of 5 stars) – 3/5
- Auto Insurance (out of 5 stars) – 3/5
AM Best
Types of Insurance Offered By Allstate
Life Insurance
Allstate offers life insurance options for people with different income levels and dependability. Term insurance is the most affordable type of life insurance but is only available through a set premium period. Universal life and whole life insurance plans on the other hand are readily available during your entire lifetime and after death through your dependents, but carries a higher premium cost.
Health Insurance
Unlike health insurance offered by HMOs, Allstate offers health insurance for specialized needs. Insurance for accidents is usual, but other insurance types like disability, cancer and critical illness insurance are types of insurance offered only by Allstate.
Property Insurance
Property insurance encompasses insurance issued to homeowners. Property insurance offered by Allstate does include homeowner’s insurance, but there are also other types of insurance policies like renter’s, condominium, landlord and business property insurance being offered by the company.
Auto Insurance
Auto Insurance from Allstate covers a wide scope of vehicles. It includes the usual auto and motorcycle insurance, but also covers motor homes, boats and other types of vehicles used in land and in water. Indeed, Allstate has insurance offerings for different types of vehicles and homes, and many possible variations of these.
Insurance Bundling Discounts and Perks Offered By Allstate
Allstate is one of the many insurance companies that offer insurance bundling (offering a variety of insurance products) and discounts for doing so. Insurance bundling is a type of insurance process where a policy owner will get more than one policy from the same insurance company to get a discounted insurance rate.
For Allstate, the types of insurance that you can bundle and see better rates for doing so are most commonly life Insurance, auto insurance, and homeowners/renters insurance. There are other variations of insurance types that you can combine that can result in saving sometime up to 50% on at least one insurance policy by doing so.
What the Future Holds for Allstate
Allstate has certainly proved that they’re an insurance company that can move along with the change in the industry and will certainly continue doing so. There are a lot of insurers who only sell the exact same types of insurance that they started out with and/or never improve upon them, but Allstate proves to be one of the most dynamic insurance companies evolving with change, consumer needs, and an ever expanding plethora of insurance products which also continue to improve via the policy options consumers now desire and need.
Policyholders have happily embraced their ability to change, whether it’s small changes like paperless billing to bigger leaps like mobile applications and usage based insurance (aka Pay As You Drive policies, or “PAYD” policies). For example, Allstate’s PAYD Drivewise program allow policyholders to simply plug in a device to their cars and pay premiums based on their own individual driving habits that’s recorded through the DriveWise device, recording data like how often and what time they typically drive, driving behavior like brake usage, average rates of speed, and more. For good drivers or those who don’t drive much, this is a great opportunity to save money.
With stable assets, a growing number of policyholders, its ability to evolve with technology and trends, and increased exclusive insurance agents ready to serve policyholders, Allstate is sure to grow along with its policyholders. Just as it did in its early days, it supplied the need of the masses and filled the gap between needs and policyholders, offering a variety of protection through the diversified products that Allstate now offers.
