How to read your insurer’s rate filing on SERFF, and check it against your renewal

Auto insurers file their rates with each state's insurance department, and in most states you can read the public parts of those filings free through the NAIC's SERFF Filing Access. A filing tells you the statewide change an insurer filed and when it took effect. It cannot tell you your own change, because the change is spread unevenly across coverages, territories and drivers. Use it to see how much of your renewal is the insurer's filed change and how much is something about you.

Whether a filing was approved before use depends on the state. California requires prior approval, with a public hearing available on larger personal-lines increases. Texas lets insurers use a rate once it is filed, subject to the commissioner's power to disapprove it. This guide shows where to look and how to read what you find.

Estimates and published averages, not a quote. Not insurance advice. State rules and insurer rules vary. Confirm requirements with your state insurance regulator or a licensed agent in your state.

Why rate filings exist

Insurance rates are regulated by states, not by a federal agency. Each state requires insurers to file their rates, rating manuals and supporting information with its insurance department, and each sets standards for what a rate may be. Texas puts the standards in plain words: a rate is excessive if it is likely to produce a long-term profit that is unreasonably high for the coverage, inadequate if it cannot sustain projected losses and expenses and continued use would endanger solvency or substantially lessen competition, and unfairly discriminatory if it is not based on sound actuarial principles, does not bear a reasonable relationship to expected loss and expense, or is based on race, creed, color, ethnicity or national origin (Texas Insurance Code 2251.051).

For a driver, the practical consequence is that a renewal increase usually has two layers. One is the insurer's filed change for everyone in the state, which is a matter of public record. The other is what changed about your own policy: drivers, cars, address, record, coverage, discounts. The renewal guide separates the second layer from your declarations pages. This guide is about the first layer.

Approved before use, or used then reviewed

States differ in when a rate can be used. The two examples below are the ones whose rules we read for this guide, and they sit near opposite ends of the range.

The difference matters when you read a renewal. In a prior-approval state, a filed increase that has not been approved should not yet be in your price. In a file-and-use state, an increase can be in your renewal before the regulator has finished looking at it, and the filing is your evidence of what the insurer said it was doing and why.

Where filings are published: SERFF Filing Access

SERFF is the NAIC's System for Electronic Rates and Forms Filing, the platform insurers use to submit rate and form filings to states. Its public side, SERFF Filing Access (SFA), provides online access to the filings each participating state has made public. The NAIC's SERFF page lists the participating jurisdictions: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, plus the Interstate Compact. Florida does not appear on that list, so Florida drivers should look to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation for its own filing search. The NAIC notes that other states may be in production without having posted links.

State pages describe the same service in their own terms. The California Department of Insurance says most property and casualty filings can be accessed at no cost through SFA. Delaware's insurance department says there is no fee. Alabama's says interested parties can see the details of a filing only if it was marked eligible for public access. Texas's SFA page says you can search company filings received after April 13, 2014.

What you can and cannot see

Not every page of every filing is public. Texas's SFA page explains its rules clearly: you can see the details of a filing only if the company or the Texas Department of Insurance marked it available for public access; filings a company marked confidential will not appear in search results; and within a visible filing, documents marked confidential will not be listed. To check, open the filing and look in the Supporting Documentation section for the question, Does this filing contain confidential information? The company's answer tells you whether the filing or some of its documents are marked confidential.

If you cannot find a Texas filing or want documents that are marked confidential, the Texas SFA page points to an open records request through TDI, or to the filing company itself. It also notes that TDI cannot provide hard copies of pages with a copyright notice. Other states have their own public records routes, usually described on the department's rates and forms page.

Finding your insurer’s filing, step by step

The search screens differ slightly by state and change over time, so the steps below describe the task rather than particular buttons.

1. Get the exact legal name of the company on your declarations page. Groups often write auto insurance through several affiliated companies, and the filing is under the company that issued your policy, not the brand name in the advertising.
2. Open SERFF Filing Access for your state from the NAIC’s list or your insurance department’s rates and forms page, and accept the terms of use if asked.
3. Search for that company and the personal auto line. If the search offers a filing-type or date filter, narrow to rate filings and to the year or two before your renewal date.
4. Open the filings whose effective dates fall before your renewal. Note each filing’s tracking number, effective date and the overall change it describes.
5. Look in the filing’s supporting documents for the summary of the rate change and any exhibits that break it down by coverage or territory, and check whether parts are marked confidential.
6. Write down the overall statewide change, the effective date for renewals, and any breakdown that matches your coverages or area.
7. If you cannot find a filing that matches your renewal, ask the insurer in writing which filing applies to your renewal and its tracking number.

Reading a filing without an actuarial degree

Filings are written for regulators, and many run to dozens of pages of exhibits. A driver needs only a few readings from them. First, the overall change: the statewide average percentage the insurer filed, and whether it is an increase or decrease. Second, the effective date, and whether it applies to new business, renewals or both, since renewals sometimes take effect later. Third, any breakdown by coverage: a filing can raise collision and comprehensive by more than liability, or the reverse, which explains why two drivers with different coverage see different changes from the same filing. Fourth, any breakdown by territory or rating tier, if published, which explains why neighbors can see different changes.

Treat everything as an average. A statewide change of a given percentage is the average across the insurer's book in that state. Individual policies move by more or less than the average, and some move in the opposite direction, because the filing also changes the relativities between territories, vehicles and drivers. That is why a filing confirms the background of your renewal but rarely explains your exact dollar change.

Where a filing explains its reasons, it often cites trends in claim frequency and severity, repair and medical costs, and reinsurance. Those are the insurer's stated reasons. The regulator's review, not the filing itself, is the check on whether the rate meets the state's standards.

Why the same filing moves two policies differently

A filing that changes coverages by different amounts produces different changes for different policies, even before territory and driver factors are considered. Labelled illustration only, with assumed figures: suppose a filing raises liability by 4.0 percent, collision by 12.0 percent and comprehensive by 8.0 percent.

So a driver who carries collision and comprehensive can see a larger change than the headline figure while a liability-only neighbor sees a smaller one, from the same filing. When a filing publishes coverage-level changes, apply them to your own coverage lines from the declarations page before deciding whether your renewal matches it.

Several filings in a row: compound, do not add

Insurers sometimes file more than one change between your renewals, or a series of changes over a few years. Percentages compound. Labelled illustration only: a filing of +6.0 percent followed a year later by +9.0 percent is a combined change of 15.54 percent, not 15 percent, because 1.06 multiplied by 1.09 equals 1.1554. If a third filing then lowers rates by 3.0 percent, the cumulative change is 12.07 percent, because 1.1554 multiplied by 0.97 equals 1.1207.

This matters when you compare your premium history with an insurer's filings over several years. Add the filings and you understate the cumulative change; compound them and you can line the result up against your own premium history, adjusted for any coverage or household changes. A cumulative filed change far below your own cumulative increase points back to your policy; one close to it suggests the market moved your price.

Check effective dates as well. A filing that took effect for renewals a few months after your last renewal will show up in your next one, not the one you are reading, so match each filing to the renewal it actually reached.

Worksheet: how much of your renewal is the filing

Labelled illustration only, with assumed figures. A driver's annual premium was $1,200 and the renewal is $1,380, an increase of $180, which is 15.0 percent because $180 divided by $1,200 equals 0.15. The insurer's public filing, effective before the renewal, shows an overall statewide increase of 8.0 percent for personal auto.

In this illustration, a little over half the increase matches the filing's average, and $84 is left to explain. That remainder could be the filing's uneven spread, for example a larger change for the driver's coverages or territory, or it could be something about the policy: a discount that ended, a ticket, a new car, an address change. The next step is the line-by-line comparison of the two declarations pages, which the Renewal Increase Analyzer is built for. If the remainder is about you and a fact is wrong, correct it; if it is about the filing, the filing's coverage or territory exhibits may show it.

Questions a filing helps you ask

A filing turns a vague complaint into specific questions. Ask the insurer, in writing: which filing applies to my renewal, by tracking number and effective date; how much of my increase comes from that filing and how much from changes to my policy; and whether any of the policy changes are facts I can correct. If your state follows the NAIC premium-increase transparency approach described in the renewal guide, you may be entitled to a factor-by-factor explanation.

A filing also helps you decide whether to shop. If your insurer filed a large increase and competitors filed smaller ones, your renewal may be higher than the market for your profile, and comparing quotes on identical coverage is the way to find out; the method is in how to compare car insurance quotes. If every major insurer filed similar increases, shopping may still help, but the market background is the larger story. Place any quote against the published state average in the Car Rate Checker, remembering that an average is a benchmark, not a quote.

Taking part, or complaining

Where a state allows public participation, a filing is also something you can respond to. In California, a consumer may request a hearing within 45 days of the public notice of a rate application, and a hearing is mandatory on timely request when a personal-lines increase exceeds 7 percent of the current rate (Insurance Code 1861.05(c), as read through reproductions). Other states take public comment in other ways; their departments' rates and forms pages describe them.

If you think an insurer applied a rate that was not filed, or applied a filing incorrectly to your policy, that is a complaint for your state insurance department, in writing, with your declarations pages and the filing's tracking number. A complaint is not a way to negotiate a price, but it is the right channel for a rate applied outside the rules.

What filings will not tell you

A filing will not tell you your premium, which depends on your rating facts. It will not tell you what another insurer would charge you; for that you need quotes on identical coverage. Confidential parts may hide the most detailed exhibits. And a filing is the insurer's case, not the regulator's decision, until the review is done; in a file-and-use state the rate may be in use while the review is still possible.

The published averages on this site come from a different source again: the NAIC's annual premium supplement, which reports what drivers paid on average in a past year, by state. Those averages, read on your state rate index page, size the market in a past period; a filing shows where one insurer intends to move from here. Reading both, and your own declarations pages, gives the full picture of a renewal. Why premiums are high to begin with, factor by factor, is in why your car insurance is so high.

Questions readers ask

Take the unexplained part of your increase from the worksheet and split it line by line with your two declarations pages in the Renewal Increase Analyzer.