Washington, D.C.—Executives at America’s large auto and homeowners insurance companies raked in huge salaries, bonuses, and stock options in 2024, while their customers faced another year of sizable premium hikes and increasingly widespread non-renewal notices. CEOs at the nation’s ten largest insurance companies received over $134 million in total compensation in 2024 and over $391 million over the past three years.

According to an analysis by the Consumer Federation of America, from 2021 to 2024 homeowners insurance costs increased by 24% nationwide, well above the rate of inflation. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, auto insurance costs were 7% higher in May 2025 compared to May 2024. At the same time as insurance companies have claimed no other option but to raise consumer prices, industry profits skyrocketed in 2024 to $169 billion.

“2024 was a bad year for policyholders, but another great year for insurance company shareholders and their CEOs,” said Michael DeLong, CFA’s Research and Advocacy Associate. “Insurance companies told regulators they had to charge consumers billions more in 2024 to stay afloat, but customers were just paying the price for insurer greed and executive excess.”

The table below summarizes the publicly reported insurance executive compensation paid in 2023 and 2024, as well as auto and homeowners insurance percentage rate increases for 2024. The executive compensation data, unless otherwise noted, are from filings made with the Nebraska Department of Insurance, which requires insurance companies that sell policies in the state to provide information about the salaries, bonuses, and additional compensation of their CEOs and other top executives. Since the data reported to the Department may exclude compensation paid to the executives by affiliated insurance companies, it is likely that the compensation figures below underrepresent what some of the executives actually earned.

 

 

Across the country, consumers have been struggling to keep up with the unrelenting escalation of premiums and have had difficulty finding coverage in recent years. For example:

• A New York Times analysis found that in 2023, insurance non-renewal rates rose in 46 states.
• The Wall Street Journal reported that homeowners insurance rates have increased by 30% or more since 2023 in at least nine states, including Arizona, Iowa, and Utah.
• In July 2025, State Farm hiked homeowners insurance rates by 27% in Illinois, which prompted calls for strengthening insurance regulation in the state. This month, the state sued State Farm for refusing to comply with state examination requirements that it provide data about its insurance policies in Illinois.

CFA has called on lawmakers throughout the country to adopt strong “prior approval” oversight of insurance company rates, which requires insurers to disclose and justify both their claims costs and their administrative expenses, including executive compensation, to state regulators. CFA points to the California Department of Insurance rule that limits the amount of executive compensation that can be passed on to policyholders in their insurance rates as a model that other states should adopt.

Under this California rule (“Excluded Expenses” 10 CCR §2644.10), the Department of Insurance has a formula to determine the “maximum permissible executive compensation” for the five highest paid executives at the insurer. Any salary in excess of that is incorporated into an “excluded expense” calculation that is used to lower the rate that an insurer is allowed to charge California customers. This exclusion, along with a similar exclusion concerning what type of corporate advertising can be passed through to policyholders, saves Californians millions of dollars per year and should be adopted across the country.

“Most Americans are required to buy insurance products, which means that lawmakers and regulators have a special obligation to make sure the premiums we are charged are reasonable. That must include protecting policyholders’ pocketbooks from these extraordinary CEO pay packages that are currently pushed onto our premiums,” said Michael DeLong.