U.S. Property & Casualty Mutual Insurers Regain Their Footing: ALIRT Insurance Research Releases Its Annual Mutual Company Market Update

In a recent client release, ALIRT discusses how the P&C market's mutual sector has managed to overcome financial challenges tied largely to property insurance losses over the past several years. Scores for ALIRT's P&C Mutual Composite continued to rebound as of both full year 2024 and 6 month 2025 financial filings.

HARTFORD, Conn., Oct. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- ALIRT recently released its annual study on U.S. property & casualty mutual insurers, as viewed through the lens of both the overall mutual insurance sector as well as the rating firm's proprietary Mutual Insurer Composite. 

Recent years have proved challenging for mutual P&C insurers given adverse inflation, weather-related catastrophic loss, and reinsurance trends which have driven outsized losses for property coverages (both personal and commercial lines-oriented) in which mutuals have a concentrated focus. These outsized losses have led to a rolling series of downgrades and negative outlooks by A.M. Best over the past several years and forced many mutual insurers to re-strategize around organization structure, business line focus, and geographical footprint, as well as introduce more restrictive policy terms and conditions.

Mutual insurers have also responded by raising rates, with ALIRT's Mutual Composite charting strong annual direct premium growth rates in the period 2022-2024. This additional revenue, along with other remedial actions, resulted in near break-even underwriting results in 2024 and a 96.0% combined ratio through mid-year 2025.

The report includes:

• A discussion of the acceleration of a demutualization trend reaching back to 2019
• Breakdowns of direct premium growth for both commercial and personal lines business
• Premium Mix and Geographic Focus
• Underwriting and operating profitability trends
• Surplus development over time
• Commentary on the financial results of individual mutual insurers which overperformed and underperformed current composite results.

The report concludes by underscoring that "Mutual insurers, by and large, will be able to manage through the current operating environment just as they have successfully negotiated past periods of market stress. Financial performance among these carriers, however, continues to be influenced by business mix and geographic focus. As such, it remains important to assess mutual insurers on a case-by-case basis as they adopt strategies to best meet the operating challenges of today. Quarterly ALIRT Scores provide an excellent gauge to measure the ongoing success – or failure – of such efforts."

For more information, please contact David Paul at [email protected]

SOURCE ALIRT Insurance Research