Car Owners Return to Highways, and Their Insurers Pick Up Tab for Accidents
A pandemic-related windfall for U.S. car insurers is diminishing as millions of vehicle owners are back on the nation’s roads again.
Car insurers’ second-quarter results will face tough comparisons with the year before, when carriers benefited from an unprecedented drop in miles and a steep decline in accident volume. Many Americans hunkered down in their homes in the second quarter 2020 as the nation weathered the early stages of the Covid-19 crisis.
However, the waning pandemic should lift year-over-year performance for the broader property-casualty insurance industry, analysts said.
Travelers Cos., a leading issuer of policies protecting small and midsize U.S. businesses and a top-10 seller of car insurance to individuals as measured by premium volume, set the stage Tuesday morning.
It swung to $934 million in net income, up from a $40 million net loss in the year-earlier second quarter. The strong improvement came even as its personal car-insurance operations paid out more in claims compared with a pandemic-related low level of losses in the prior-year quarter.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24801728/Screenshot_2023_07_21_at_1.45.12_PM.jpeg)
