As Insurance Policy Holders Pay Record Rates, Industry Executives Rake in Record Pay

Among the big U.S. property & casualty insurers that publicly report executive compensation, C-suite pay is rising fast, a new analysis from the Revolving Door Project and Public Citizen has found. At nine of the top 25 homeowners insurance writers—comprising 24% of the market—42 executives took home a collective $310 million last year, up 21% from 2022. That’s more than $7 million per executive, on average.

Between 2023 and 2024, all nine companies boosted pay to top executives, by an average of 30%, the analysis found.*

Across the U.S. property & casualty insurance industry, which includes home and auto insurance, 2024 was a year of windfall profits, hitting an all-time high of nearly $167 billion, up 91% from 2023 and whopping 330% from 2022. Yet, 2024 was also a year of record-setting damage from climate-driven storms. In response, insurers jacked up premiums and withdrew coverage from some customers, and even entire states, where risks to insured properties threaten to trim their profits.

In 2024, there were 27 confirmed climate change-driven weather disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each to impact the United States.

“Executive compensation is climbing at the same time policyholders are struggling with premium hikes, claim denials, and coverage withdrawals” said Kenny Stancil, senior researcher with Revolving Door Project. “In other words, millions of households’ economic pain shows up as better paydays for a handful of insurance bigwigs. This injustice underscores the need for major reforms aimed at expediting the clean energy transition and delivering safe and affordable housing for all. Insurer profits can no longer be prioritized over everything else.”

At most big insurance companies, executives can collect lavish pay packages without scrutiny or oversight because the companies are structured as mutuals or exchanges, meaning that their shares don’t trade publicly and they have no duty to report this information publicly. But at the publicly traded companies that do report the data, executive pay is growing at a headspinning rate:

• At Allstate, CEO Thomas Wilson took home compensation worth $26.1 million in 2024, up from $16.5 million in 2023.
• Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg’s compensation rose 9% in 2024 to $30.1 million.

“Executive compensation is increasing as pay packages have become more heavily linked to so-called ‘performance metrics’ that align CEOs’ interests with shareholders—while putting them at odds with consumers. Improving a company’s combined ratio or return on equity means more money for executives—often on the back of improper claims denials and delays,” said Dan Wagner, research director with Public Citizen. “The industry’s record profits come at the expense of homeowners, who are facing unjustified premium hikes and coverage withdrawals. And in some cases, these companies are coming to state regulators and claiming climate change justifies massive rate hikes, without letting these regulators weigh the profits these companies are raking in. It is a massive cash grab by the insurance industry as climate change is accelerating and creating havoc in markets across the country.”

And as the insurance industry urges state regulators to sign off on massive premium increases, insurance companies continue to invest in and underwrite coal, oil, and gas—even though fossil fuel pollution is exacerbating the extreme weather that insurers point to as justification for policy cancellations and rate hikes. U.S.-based insurance firms were estimated to hold between $536 billion and $582 billion in fossil fuel-related assets in 2019, and they also make billions every year from underwriting dirty energy projects.

"The home insurance industry is making record profits despite mounting climate-related damages—damages driven, in part, by the industry's continued investments in and underwriting of fossil fuels,” concluded Stancil.