The Fairer Finance Trust in Insurance Index - Autumn 2026

Consumer trust in insurance providers has improved for the third wave running, with car, home, pet and travel insurance all recording higher scores in our latest Trust in Insurance Index.

Car insurance saw the biggest improvement, rising 1.14 percentage points to 55.53%. Home (54.23%), pet (56.74%) and travel (54.42%) all rose by between 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points. Pet insurance remains the most trusted of the four sectors.

Falling premiums have been a key driver of the recovery. But that support now looks to be fading. Car insurance prices rose in the three months to May 2026, the first increase after nine consecutive quarters of falling prices, according to the Confused.com Price Index¹. Home insurance premiums have also started to rise again.

A diverging recovery

Despite the overall improvement in trust scores, the recovery is being felt very differently depending on customers’ financial circumstances.

The gap in trust between the highest-income households (£70,000+) and the lowest-income households (£0–£20,000) widened in every sector this wave. In car insurance, trust among the highest earners rose more than 2 percentage points to 59.55%. Among the lowest earners it rose by just 0.6 points to 52.35%. In pet insurance, trust among the lowest-income households fell by almost a percentage point, while every other income group improved.

Confidence with money is an even bigger dividing line. Customers who say they are not confident managing their money trust their insurer between 8.5 and 10.4 percentage points less than those who are confident. That makes financial confidence the largest single trust gap in our data, bigger than differences by age, gender, region or vulnerability. In home insurance, trust among customers who aren’t confident with money stands at just 44.73%, compared with 55.08% for confident customers.

Trust leaders and biggest movers

(Only brands with at least 100 respondents are included in the tables below.)

Car insurance:

•        NFU Mutual leads the sector with a trust score of 80.07%, ahead of Marks & Spencer (72.54%). M&S was one of the biggest improvers among larger brands, up more than 6 percentage points.

•        Among the major insurers (those with over 1,000 respondents), AA has pulled clear as the most trusted, with a score of 63.43%. RAC (60.04%) is now second and Saga (59.85%) third.

•        Hastings Direct (51.47%) continues to trail the major insurer group.

Home insurance:

•        NFU Mutual has the highest trust score among larger home insurers at 69.38%, ahead of John Lewis (66.44%). Nationwide (66.39%) remains the most trusted of the major home insurers.

•        Royal Bank of Scotland saw one of the biggest improvements, rising 4.5 percentage points to 65.40%.

•        Quotemehappy (40.83%) and Swiftcover (41.52%) sit at the bottom of the table.

Pet insurance:

•        Churchill has the highest trust score among larger pet insurers (65.86%), followed by PDSA (63.78%).

•        The Insurance Emporium saw the biggest improvement, jumping 8.5 percentage points. Despite this, it remains bottom of the table at 42.83%.

Travel insurance:

•        British Airways retains the highest trust score in travel insurance at 68.20%, ahead of Santander (62.38%).

•        TUI was the most improved brand, up 6 percentage points to 59.98%. Jet2.com slipped 2.3 points to 59.68%.

•        esure has the lowest score in the sector at 38.79%.

Claims experience: the moment of truth

As expected, customers who have made a claim generally trust their insurer more than those who haven’t. In car insurance, claimants’ trust score of 63.24% is almost 9 percentage points higher than non-claimants’ (54.39%). The claimant gap was wider in our Autumn 2026 ratings than the Spring 2026 results in car, home and travel.

Pet insurance is the exception. It is the only sector where trust among claimants fell, down from 61.42% to 60.89%, while trust among those who haven’t claimed rose. The trust gap between claimants and non-claimants has narrowed from 8.1 to 6.0 percentage points.

There are notable differences at brand level (brands with at least 100 claimants):

•        RAC has turned around its claims-stage trust. In Spring, RAC was the only large car insurer where claimants trusted it less than non-claimants, by 5.6 percentage points. This wave, trust among RAC claimants has jumped almost 10 points to 62.92%, and claimants now trust it more than those who haven’t claimed.

•        Aviva shows the strongest uplift from claiming across car, home and travel. In car insurance, its claimants’ trust score (68.62%) is 14 percentage points higher than its non-claimants’. 

•        In pet insurance, Animal Friends, one of the largest providers in the market, is the only larger brand whose claimants trust it less than non-claimants. LV= continues to show the strongest positive effect of claiming of any brand in our data. Its claimants’ trust score of 70.53% is 19 points above its non-claimants’.

Overall claims satisfaction scores increased across car, home and travel insurance for the 5^th wave in a row. Pet insurance broke this trend with the Autumn 2026 claims satisfaction score a fraction below the Spring 2026 value at 63.81%. Pet still has higher claim satisfaction than other sectors but this could change in the next couple of waves if trends continue. The graph below shows overall claim satisfaction across the four sectors.

Pet insurance under pressure

Pet insurance remains the most trusted sector overall. But beneath the headline, the customers under the most financial pressure are falling further behind.

Trust among pet insurance customers who describe their bills as a heavy burden fell this wave to 50.41%. That leaves them more than 12 percentage points behind customers for whom bills are not a burden (62.76%), the widest gap of this kind in any sector. The gap between customers with and without characteristics of vulnerability also widened, from 5.4 to 6.3 percentage points.

Trust also continues to decline as pets get older. It falls from 62.00% for owners of pets aged 1–4 to 50.92% for owners of pets over 10. As we have noted before, many policies introduce percentage co-payments once a pet reaches somewhere between five and eight, and inner limits on specific conditions can leave owners paying more than they expected. Insurers should be doing far more to warn customers about these changes before they hit.

We’re seeing signs of this in our claims satisfaction data as well. Since Autumn 2025 the claims satisfaction score for customers with pets under 5 has stayed fairly stable, but scores for those with pets over 5 years old have dropped 4.66 percentage points.

There is further evidence for this in our polling on value for money. For the first time ever the average value for money score for pet insurance customers was lower amongst those who had made a claim than those who hadn’t (46.72% vs 47.26%). Across travel, home and car insurance claimants have a value for money score between 6 and 9 points higher than non-claimants.

Customers might not be expecting to have to fork out for co-payments as well as their regular premiums, and this is going to effect people that are financially struggling much more.

Vulnerable customers: some progress, but gaps remain

In our Spring 2026 Index, every larger car insurer showed lower trust among customers with characteristics of vulnerability. That remains true this wave, but the gaps are narrowing. Ten of the 15 larger car insurers have reduced the difference between vulnerable and non-vulnerable customers, and the sector-wide gap has fallen from 4.0 to 3.7 percentage points. AXA still has the largest gap, with vulnerable customers’ trust more than 9 points below that of other customers. AA continues to have the highest trust score among vulnerable customers.

Pet insurance is moving in the opposite direction, with the vulnerability gap widening this wave.

1 – Confused.com Price Index, three months to May 2026 (https://www.confused.com/compare-car-insurance/average-car-insurance-cost-uk)

Every six months, Fairer Finance polls around 10,000 insurance customers via Opinium to ask them “Based on everything you know about this insurer, to what extent would you agree or disagree with the following statement – ‘I trust [name of provider]’?”. The trust index score is calculated using the following formula: ((% answering strongly agree x 2) + (% answering agree) + (% answering disagree x -1) + (% answering strongly disagree x -2)) / 2. The Autumn 2026 data is based on six waves of survey responses weighted to give additional weight to more recent waves. Sector-level scores include all respondents, including customers of brands with samples too small to be rated. Brand tables include only brands with at least 100 respondents, and claims analysis at brand level includes only brands with at least 100 claimants.