Difference between Property/Casualty and Personal Auto insurance

Question

I’m looking for distinct differences in Property/Casualty Insurance and Personal Auto insurance.

Im analyzing various insurance companies and their respective loss, expense, and combined ratios and came across numbers for property/casualty and personal auto. I’m having a hard time finding distinct differences in the two. The way I’m interpreting this is that P&C is a broad term that encompasses Personal Auto as well as things like homeowners, renters, condo insurance. Does P&C incorporate most product lines of an insurance company (aside from life/health/medical) while Personal Auto, Homeowners, etc are subsets of that?

Answer 1

If the financial statement for the insurance carrier lists separate line items for Personal Auto and Property and Casualty, then one is not a subset of the other.

Typically Property and Casualty means commercial and personal property; buildings and their contents, as well as the liability insurance associated with them. This includes commercial auto, or fleet insurance and homeowners. Also included are lots of miscellaneous lines; for example, jewelry and camera floaters, builders risk, umbrella liability, and more.

Personal Auto is separate because it is a either a very large or very small percentage of the company’s lines and because it is complex and quite competitive making it difficult but not impossible to earn a profit. If Personal Auto is 70% of the business and the company is losing money year after year, investors and, I assume, regulators, would like to see the details.

The typical personal auto insurers, GEICO, Progressive, State Farm, et al, have a high percentage of their business in personal auto. On the other hand, there are specialty carriers whose business is almost entirely commercial; factories, warehouses, etc., whose personal auto line is almost zero.