Auto insurers closed 45% of the liability and medical claims they resolved in 2025 without making a payment, up from around 35% a decade earlier, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of insurer data filed with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Final 2025 rates will likely come down slightly as outstanding claims are resolved, according to the Journal's methodology.
For collision repair shops, the more relevant figure in the data is the one that did not move. Auto damage claims, meaning collision and comprehensive coverage, closed without payment at a rate just under 25% in 2025, a share that has changed little in 10 years, according to the Journal's analysis.
Liability and medical claims are harder to resolve than auto damage claims, the Journal found: they cost more on average and are far more likely to draw in an attorney before they close, and that is where the rising no-payment rate is concentrated.
The Journal identified the 10 largest personal auto insurers using 2025 market-share data from rating firm AM Best, then tracked how each one's no-payment rate on liability and medical claims changed from 2016 to 2025. Three carriers accounted for the steepest climbs: Farmers, Liberty Mutual, and State Farm, according to the analysis. Liberty Mutual's rate rose to 54% from 29%, State Farm's rose to 47% from 26%, and Farmers' rose to 39% from 19%. The remaining seven insurers in the Journal's review posted smaller increases.
Why the gap is widening
Insurers attribute the trend to rising fraud and litigation; consumer advocates say tighter claims controls are boosting insurer profits, as the industry's net loss ratio fell to its lowest level since 2020 in 2025, according to the Journal's analysis.
Insurers told the Journal that claims counted as closed without payment can include cases where another driver's insurer paid instead, claims withdrawn by the customer, claims outside a policy's terms, or claims valued below a policyholder's deductible. The data does not include the specific reasons behind each closed claim, including how much of the trend is driven by rising deductibles, according to the Journal's methodology.
Bodily injury claims climbing separately
Rising liability costs are showing up elsewhere in claims data shops track. Bodily injury claim frequency rose 11% over the past two years even as most other personal auto lines declined, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions. Separately, CCC's Crash Course 2026 report found the average paid bodily injury claim severity increased 10.3% year over year and 32% over the past four years.
Consumer-side survey data has pointed in a similar direction, with a growing share of drivers saying they are deferring repairs and trimming coverage as insurance costs rise.
Shops that want to track how individual carriers handle claims have their own resource in CRASH Network's annual Insurer Report Card, which surveys shops directly on carrier claims practices rather than relying on regulatory filings.
