Brokers reveal 2025’s best and worst commercial lines insurers

UK general insurance (UKGI) brokers voted Markel UK as their favourite commercial lines insurer for a second year running, achieving a personal best within the Five Star Rating Report: Commercial Lines and Personal Lines 2024/25, published exclusively by Insurance Times in March 2025.

Based on a survey of 850 UKGI brokers conducted between October and December 2024, Markel UK received an overall five star rating and a 4.36 score from its partner brokers – up 0.25 points from the previous year’s results.

In the survey underpinning this year’s report, Insurance Times asked brokers to rate insurers across a variety of service areas, including quality of cover, claims experience and relationship management. The subsequent results were aggregated into an overall five star score.

The report noted that Arch Insurance fell by 0.03 points year-on-year, narrowly clinching second place with an overall score of 4.06. Zurich, meanwhile, improved by 0.18 points over the last year to take third place with a score of 4.03.

Aviva (3.95), Chubb (3.94) and QBE (3.92) led a tight middle-of-the-pack race, with RSA (3.83), AIG (3.78) and Allianz (3.78) grouped narrowly behind.

Axa was the third lowest insurer as rated by polled brokers, despite a year-on-year improvement of 0.05 points, with an overall score of 3.74.

NIG fell by a substantial 0.18 points – the largest fall recorded among commercial insurers – to place second bottom with an overall score of 3.68.

Hiscox placed last with a yearly improvement of 0.18 points – the joint second highest improvement among the insurers featured – to an overall score of 3.49, which was not enough to lift it off the bottom spot.

Five-year trends

Now with a second consecutive year at the top of Insurance Times’ commercial lines ranking, Markel UK has officially claimed the research’s top spot in three of the previous five years. Having topped the charts in 2021, it was narrowly runner up to Aviva in 2022, before registering a fourth place finish in 2023 behind Aviva, QBE and Arch.

While 2022 marked record low scores for commercial lines insurers across the board, the two last placed finishers – RSA and Hiscox – have responded differently.

RSA finished bottom of the pack in 2022 with a score of 2.99, but since then has steadily improved – climbing six places and 0.84 points in total to finish with a score of 3.83 in 2025.

Hiscox, on the other hand, did not managed to improve its ranking. Since a second bottom finish in 2022, it has occupied last place in each of the previous three years – despite increasing its overall score to 3.49.

Improving standards

In general, commercial insurer scores have trended upwards in recent years. In 2021, the average five star score across insurers sat at 3.71, which then fell to a five-year low of 3.56 in 2022, largely due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Scores then rose across three successive years, averaging 3.74 in 2023, 3.84 in 2024 and reaching a record high of 3.88 in 2025.