How good is Kentucky National Insurance Company? Does it have a lot of customer complaints? How does it stack up compared to competing home & auto insurance companies? This blog post will review Kentucky National, including its customer complaint record over the last four years. There can be a big difference in the cost & coverage offered by different insurance companies, and being a well-known company does not mean being the best. The wise consumer shops the market for the right combination of coverage, acceptable claims & customer service, and a good price. This blog post will help you decide if Kentucky National Insurance Company might be a good choice for you. I’ll also show you other leading auto & home insurance companies in Kentucky, so you can comparison shop & find the best company for you.

Kentucky National was purchased by First Kentucky Insurance LLC (Owned by Terry E Forcht, CEO of The Forcht Group) in August 2007, and sells auto, homeowners, renters, manufactured home, condominium, rental properties insurance in Kentucky. Kentucky National is now selling the same types of insurance in Tennessee, too, starting in June 2009. Kentucky National Insurance Company sells insurance through local independent insurance agents in your community. You can find agents close to you by visiting the company website at Kentucky National Insurance Company. Kentucky National can be contacted by phone at 800-432-9310 or 859-367-5200.

Kentucky National Insurance Company has a very small share of the KY auto & home insurance markets, earning only $15,975,157 in annual premium for all home & auto insurance policies it sold in 2011. As a comparison, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, one of the largest insurers of autos in Kentucky (and in most states), earned $472,496,946 in annual premium for all insurance policies it sold. Even many other companies, with a small share of the Kentucky home & auto insurance market, have many more customers than Kentucky National. For example, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company sold $35,635,638 of annual home & auto insurance premium in Kentucky for 2011, which is more than double the amount of Kentucky National Insurance Company.

AM Best, the best-known of the insurance company rating agencies, does not rate Kentucky National. It’s not unusual for AM Best to not rate very small companies. Companies not rated by large rating agencies, like AM Best, Moodys, Fitch, Weiss or Standard & Poor, are not necessarily less financially stable, but I prefer to avoid them. A ratings company called Demotech, Inc. rates many companies not rated by AM Best, including Kentucky National Insurance Company. Demotech gave Kentucky National an “A” (Exceptional) rating, which it affirmed again on 11/17/2014. An “Exceptional” rating sounds great, but there are actually two ratings higher than the “A” grade, bestowed by Demotech — “A Prime” and “A Double Prime.” Here’s a link to the Kentucky National Insurance Company Demotech Financial Strength Rating.

Financial strength ratings help you determine if an insurance company has the money to pay claims, so if there are a large number of claims, or if there is an economic downturn, the company is not likely to go bankrupt, and will be able to pay your claim. However, financial strength ratings are not a measure of customer service, or how well the company handles claims. An insurance company may have the highest financial strength rating, but have many complaints about how it does not pay claims promptly or fairly.

Kentucky National Insurance Company, like hundreds of small single state or regional insurance companies, does not have enough customers to be included in the annual JD Power auto & home insurance customer satisfaction studies, which evaluates the largest national and regional insurance companies in the USA. Having fewer customers or not being included in a JD Power insurance study does not make an auto or home insurance company better or worse than large or JD Power rated companies, but it does make it harder to evaluate the quality of customer service provided by a company not rated by JD Power, like Kentucky National Insurance Company.

There are many very good small or regional car & home insurance companies, but measuring their customer service is difficult, because their customers are not included in homeowners & car insurance customer satisfaction studies, by companies like JD Power or Consumer Reports. You can find complaints for any insurance company on the Internet, through sites like Yelp or ripoffreport.com, but these customer reviews are weighted towards complaints, positive reviews may not be trustworthy, and even the opinion of a few hundred people can’t tell you what most of the company’s customers think about the service they receive. There are some websites trying to quantify and score insurance companies for complaints and customer service, but I think they fail to provide consumers with reliable information, which is one of the reasons I started my blog and website.

As I said, you can find people telling you about a terrible experience with every insurance company, but it’s not a good sign I became aware of Kentucky National, by one of their customers complaining about the company on my Facebook page.

Other than the complaint ratings I developed from the insurance company complaint statistics compiled by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) I list below, a prospective Kentucky National customer may consider complaints filed with the BBB, and the Kentucky National Insurance Company Better Business Bureau rating, as one indication of their customer service.

As of the original publish date of 4/30/13 for this review, Kentucky National was rated “A” by the BBB (“A+” is the highest rating from the BBB), and the company has been accredited since 11/01/2007. There were four complaints against Kentucky National in the last three years (three of the complaints occurring in the last 12 months), all regarding billing or collections. Updating this review on 1/8/15, the BBB rating for Kentucky National Insurance company is now “A+” with eight complaints in the last three years (three of the complaints were closed in the last 12 months), three were for billing or collections, three were for a problem with service, and two were for advertising or sales issues. All complaints had been closed and resolved with the assistance of the BBB.

If you consider insuring with Kentucky National, you may want to choose an experienced independent insurance agent, with excellent customer service skills, in case you have a billing problem. How do you find an agent like that? Many agents brag about their customer service, but a lot of them don’t deliver when you need it. You can find out what you need to know about agents, by asking them to provide specific examples of customer billing problems they have solved. What do they do specifically, to avoid billing issues with their clients? For example, do they monitor your policy and contact you if the price changes, or call you when a bill is past due? Findng a good agent can be the best way to help you get the service you deserve. If you want more tips, you can read my series of blog posts about finding a good homeowners or auto insurance agent.

Here are the 2010, 2011, 2012, & 2013 home & auto insurance complaint ratios for Kentucky National Insurance Company, as calculated by the NAIC. A ratio of less than “1” is better than the industry average (adjusted for market share), a ratio of “1” is average, and more than “1” is worse than average.

I developed a rating system, based on the compliant ratios, to make it easier to tell a good complaint record from a bad complaint record. Complaint ratios from 0 to .75 are rated “B” (better than average), complaint ratios from .76 to 1.25 are rated “C” (about average), and complaint ratios from 1.26 or higher are rated “W” (worse than average).

Kentucky National received a worse than average complaint rating in 2011 for home insurance, but had no home insurance complaints in 2010, 2012 & 2013, and no auto insurance complaints in 2010, 2011, or 2012, and only one auto insurance complaint in 2013. The problem with very small market shares like Kentucky National, is only a few complaints can lead to a very high complaint ratio, which is the case for this company for home insurance complaints in 2011. Two home insurance complaints made the 2011 home insurance complaint ratio for Kentucky National Insurance Company, move up from a perfect 0.00 (No complaints) to 2.63 — almost three times the industry average (2.63 times to be exact). One complaint was for billing. The other complaint is more concerning, because it involved unsatisfactory settlement of a claim. Both complaints were resolved by a compromised settlement.

In spite of its few complaints over the last four years, keep in mind, many unhappy insurance company customers never get to the step of filing a complaint with their state department of insurance, so don’t rely on choosing your insurance company on good or bad complaint ratios alone, and weigh them among other considerations.

The bottom line: At this time, the complaint record for Kentucky National Insurance Company is above average in most years.

My experience working in the insurance industry, and researching insurance companies, has made me a firm believer you can have an awful experience with all companies, even ones with great customer service reputations. But many customers, with all insurance companies, are happy with the service they receive from their auto or home insurance company.

Kentucky National has a great complaint record over all, but there is a lack of objective information to make any conclusion about exceptional claims or customer service for the company. Kentucky National is a newer, small insurance company not rated by many of the major rating firms.

For me, Kentucky National would have to provide broader coverage, or a very good price, to choose it over larger, longer established companies, with the same coverage and competitive rates, with more measurable ways to conclude they have an acceptable level of customer service. Since Kentucky National is sold through independent insurance agents representing other companies, too, it’s more important to find a good agent, and see if they recommend Kentucky National. Comparison shopping among insurance companies and agents helps you find a competent agent and decide on the best advice.

Unless you have recent home or auto insurance claims, or a poor driving record (or other attributes disqualifying you for standard auto insurance, such as being licensed for less than three years), it would be wise for you to shop the market to find the best combination of coverage, price, and service.

You don’t get better service by paying more, because there is no relationship between price and customer service. Some companies will charge twice as much or more for the same coverage as other companies, but still provide poor service.

Here is my blog post showing the largest auto & home insurance companies in Kentucky. You can research many of the companies by going to my main website.

Did this Kentucky National Insurance review explain what you need to know about the company? Tell me about it. Comment on my facebook page. Email me at help@smartshopyourcarinsurance.com if you have questions and would like my help. Follow me on Twitter for important insurance consumer news and new blog entries at CarInsWatch.