The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has released new data indicating that consumer satisfaction with insurers in the UK reached 85% in the second quarter of 2025, up from 84% in the previous survey.
The findings suggest that insurers have improved their performance across all nine survey themes, with notable gains in areas such as loyalty, control over claims, and respect.
Despite these improvements, consumers continue to view fairness as a weaker area for insurers, highlighting it as a key issue for building trust. The survey identified several actions that consumers believe would further strengthen trust, including offering discounts for customers who remain with the same provider, recognising loyalty at renewal after a claim, and ensuring premiums do not increase simply because a customer is no longer new.
Other suggestions included handling complaints professionally and fairly, and assessing risk on an individual basis rather than relying on generic assumptions.
The increase in consumer satisfaction was observed across motor, travel, and buildings/contents insurance. The CII’s Index also examined responses by age, gender, and ethnicity. Satisfaction among respondents aged 18-34 and 35-54 reached the highest levels since data collection began in 2019.
In contrast, satisfaction among those aged 55 and over returned to its lowest level at 83%, with fairness identified as a particularly important theme for this group.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) reported less positive ratings compared to the previous survey, with overall satisfaction falling slightly to 82%. SMEs highlighted the need for insurers to answer questions quickly and clearly, offer loyalty discounts, ensure policy documents are straightforward, assess risk individually, and explain policies clearly.
A CII report earlier this year also identified collaboration, certainty, and creativity as key principles for rebuilding public trust in insurance, especially in the wake of high-profile incidents such as the Grenfell Tower disaster.
The report noted that the London Market’s response to events like the war in Ukraine and the Grenfell Tower collapse had a significant impact on public perception, with positive effects seen when the industry demonstrated expertise and innovation. In contrast, a lack of collaboration in response to Grenfell was cited as a factor in damaging the sector’s reputation.
While general insurance satisfaction remains high, the FCA’s Financial Lives Survey found that life insurance lags behind other products in customer satisfaction and trust. Only 53% of life insurance policyholders expressed satisfaction, and 22% indicated low trust in their provider, highlighting the need for greater engagement and transparency in this segment.
Commenting on the results, Dr Matt Connell, CII group policy and public affairs director, said, “The CII’s Public Trust Index shows that consumers’ perceptions of how insurers are performing have improved in this latest survey. Perceptions of price walking have weighed heavily on consumer minds for some time, and we may be seeing early signs of a change.”
Connell added that there remains significant opportunity for insurers to demonstrate greater fairness, suggesting that firms could turn compliance with the FCA’s price walking rules into an explicit customer guarantee.
“Insurers have a great chance to mend the damage to trust that has been caused by price walking – but first, they must make what they are doing much clearer to consumers,” he said.
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