Farmers Insurance Group reviews

Farmers has been spiraling out of control since they acquired AIG's personal lines business, which was never that healthy to begin with; it makes you wonder if they did their due diligence or made the purchase because they desperately needed to grow on the East Coast. The insurance products have not been competitively priced for years leading to lower policy growth vs. peers and very poor policyholder retention. Farmers recently scrapped their visionary AgencyPoint model because they realized it was way too costly and was not producing quality agents, which is a function of both desperate recruiting hiring almost all comers and lack of support to the agents. Perhaps the model should have been thought out a little bit more than the cocktail napkin it was conceived on. They have little to no data on which to make critical business decisions and it shows when they've radically changed the national corporate strategy twice in 3 years. It also stifles all ranks of managers who can't determine what is going on because the reporting is inconsistent and well below industry standards. Customers are leaving in droves because Farmers provides a horrific customer experience. Almost every process has roughly 2-3x too many steps and there can be over 10 separate adjusters on a single file, all wanting to take their own statement. There are too many sacred processes, workflows and claims applications that don't add the intended value, slow down the adjusting process and confuse customers. It also allows adjusters to "pass the buck" because "someone else handles that part." In the adjusters defense, they're just following the confounding procedures deemed to be earth-changing from L.A. But don't ever speak up against someone else's ill-conceived brainchild because you won't be exhibiting the proper "Behaviors." Upper management shows no respect to the staff and there is a pervasive culture of CYA with upper managers throwing their own direct reports under the bus to save themselves. They claim they respect creative ideas but never provide positive reinforcement and will go so far as claiming your ideas as their own. They will not back you when you make managerial decisions because it is easier to keep the herd happy than support your judgment and face questions themselves. The worse of it all are the heralded "Behaviors" that everyone is subjectively judged upon. I have personally sat through many a "calibration call" to only have State Managers and Directors try to explain why my staff is meeting or only partially meeting expectations when they are both crushing their numbers and leading multiple projects. It has become readily apparent that Farmers is using the Behaviors as a broad brush to cut expenses by reducing and eliminating yearly performance raises and hoping staff will voluntarily resign. They are also doing this by reviewing ALL staff with "shared objectives." This is so inherently unfair to front line staff yet Farmers is allowing entire states and large swaths of employees to be unfairly downgraded. How else do you explain a 20 point reduction in combined ratio when there is negative policy growth? Career opportunities are scarce to say the least. They just fired over 100 employees in the East Coast and have gutted the West Coast staff as well. The only way to get ahead is to relocate to home office in LA or to one of the Midwestern centers. Farmers was very bloated with mid-level managers and they are being let go in droves. The only "safe" employees right now are those making an entry-level salary who will blindly follow the deaf, dumb and blind executives who are driving this company into the ground. If you are currently making more than the 50% mark of your pay band, watch your back.

Computer systems always broken, Management constantly lies, no room for growth