How Millennials Are Steering the Future of Auto Insurance

Auto insurance is about to get more expensive.

This year, property and casualty (P&C) insurers plan on raising auto premiums nationwide. The hikes will be particularly steep in some states: South Carolina drivers, for instance, can expect to pay nearly 14% more for coverage in 2017.

Higher premiums are the latest sign of trouble for the U.S. P&C insurance industry, which comprises a mix of publicly held companies, mutual firms, and subsidiaries.

According to the Insurance Information Institute (III), State Farm Mutual is the industry leader with $59.4 billion in “direct premiums written” in 2015—an industry term representing the total cost of written premiums not including those sold off to reinsurers. Second is publicly traded Allstate (ALL: $30.2 billion), followed by Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary GEICO ($30.0 billion). Liberty Mutual ($29.8 billion) comes in fourth, followed by Travelers (TRV: $23.2 billion), a public firm that earns most of its revenue from commercial P&C sales.

Other notable P&C insurers include names like Progressive (PGR: $21.3 billion), Chubb (CB: $20.7 billion), and Farmers Insurance ($19.1 billion), the latter of which is a subsidiary of Swiss conglomerate Zurich Insurance Group. These companies both insure your property and protect you in the event that you’re found legally liable for someone else’s loss.

The sector’s problems trace back to 2015. As part of a Dodd-Frank review, the Treasury Department reports…