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Over the last few years, many large companies in the auto insurance industry have faced cutthroat competition. However, they're gaining a larger hold on the market and seeing rising premiums because of it. For this reason, and because of how aggressive many companies in the field now are when it comes to trying to lure away other insurers' clients, it might be important for auto agents to do a little bit more to connect with their current customers and help them both find discounts and better understand what they're paying for with their coverage to begin with.

In the third quarter of the year year, the 30 largest auto insurance companies continued to take up a large and growing portion of the overall market, according to the latest data from SNL Financial. Overall, they boosted the value of their premiums to $42.98 billion in 2014, up 4.86 percent from last year's numbers, based on the latest quarterly data compiled by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. And of those largest companies in the industry, nearly 1 in 3 said their premiums jumped at least 5 percent. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry actually fared even better, with direct premiums written jumping 5.13 percent, the report said. That marked the largest annual increase in any third quarter over the last decade.

Individuals, not companies, continue to drive demand
Further, policies for personal auto physical damage - as opposed to those for commercial entities - made up 91.78 percent of all policies issued last year, the report said. However, that number was even larger for the 30 largest insurers, which obviously tend to focus on individual consumers, as many of them posted numbers approaching 99 percent of all policies.

Because of the ways in which the auto insurance industry is changing these days, agents who are able to put just a little bit more effort into establishing relationships with their clients will likely benefit significantly. This is because providing good customer service actually goes farther than simply being able to provide some consumers with the occasional discount, in terms of driving customer satisfaction. That, in turn, could lead to higher customer retention rates, especially as people come to better understand just what kind of importance a good insurance agent can have in their lives.

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