Insurance Trust Gap Widens: Higher Earners Gain While Lowest Earners Lag Behind

The recovery of consumer trust in the insurance sector is fracturing along socio-economic lines, as a widening gap between high and low-income households threatens to undermine industry-wide sentiment gains. For carriers and brokers, the emergence of a 10.4 percentage point trust deficit among consumers with low financial confidence signals a significant regulatory and reputational risk.

What was announced

The Autumn 2026 Trust in Insurance Index, based on a survey of 10,000 consumers, reveals that while headline trust scores have improved for the third consecutive wave, the benefits are not being felt equally. Across car, home, pet, and travel insurance, the gap in trust between the highest-income households (earning over £70,000) and the lowest-income households (earning up to £20,000) has widened significantly.

In the car insurance sector, trust among high earners rose to 59.55%, while trust among low earners saw a marginal increase to 52.35%. This creates a 7.2 percentage point gap, up from 5.7 percentage points just six months ago. Overall, car insurance saw the most significant headline improvement, rising 1.14 percentage points to 55.53%. Home insurance (54.23%), pet insurance (56.74%), and travel insurance (54.42%) all recorded modest gains between 0.7 and 0.8 points, with pet insurance remaining the most trusted category overall.

However, the data suggests this recovery may be fragile. While falling premiums previously supported trust, the Confused.com Price Index indicates car insurance prices rose in the three months to May 2026, marking the first increase after nine quarters of decline. Furthermore, pet insurance has become an outlier; it is the only sector where trust among claimants actually fell, dropping from 61.42% to 60.89%. This contrasts with car insurance, where claimants report a trust score of 63.24%, nearly 9 percentage points higher than those who have not made a claim.

"When we drill down into our claims satisfaction data, it’s clear that all sectors have made improvements over the last few years – but pet insurance is showing the first signs of a reversal. It’s the only sector where customers who have claimed are less happy than those who haven’t. And we expect that situation to deteriorate further over the next few years as pandemic pet owners start to see their animals age – and feel the pain of rising premiums and co-payment claims for the first time."

James Daley, Managing Director of independent consumer group Fairer Finance.

The companies involved

Fairer Finance is an independent consumer group and ratings agency that focuses on the UK financial services sector. The organization is known for its "Trust in Insurance Index" and its efforts to push for greater transparency and better consumer outcomes across the industry. James Daley, who serves as the Managing Director of Fairer Finance, also holds the title of Honorary Alderman, bringing a high level of civic and professional scrutiny to the insurance market.

The company operates a Consumer Advisory Board, which is currently chaired by Helene Brichet. Fairer Finance has established itself as a critical voice in the market, providing independent ratings not just for general insurance products like car and home, but also for niche sectors such as online will-writing. Its data is frequently used by carriers, MGAs, and brokers to benchmark their performance against competitors in terms of customer experience and claims handling. The organization remains a key observer of how macroeconomic factors, such as premium inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, impact the relationship between financial institutions and their policyholders.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely followed the evolving landscape of consumer trust and regulatory oversight in the UK. In April 2026, we reported on the previous wave of this data in Trust in Insurance on the Rise – but Insurers Still Have a Long Way to Go, which highlighted the early stages of the current recovery. The role of technology in this relationship was further explored in Sheldon Mills Warns AI Could Turn Consumers Into Passive 'Observers' of Personal Finance, where the FCA's Sheldon Mills discussed the risks of automation in customer interactions.

Internal leadership changes at the consumer group were also covered in Fairer Finance Appoints Helene Brichet to Chair of Consumer Advisory Board, while the group's expansion into broader legal services was noted in Fairer Finance Launches Online Will-Writing Ratings Amid Rising Concerns Over DIY Wills.

What this means from an insurtech perspective

From an insurtech perspective, the widening trust gap based on financial confidence is a direct challenge to the industry's implementation of Consumer Duty. The fact that customers who are less confident managing money trust their insurers up to 10.4% less suggests that current digital interfaces and policy wordings are failing the most vulnerable segments. For incumbent vendors and legacy core-system operators, this creates urgent pressure to modernize communication tools beyond simple "smooth application journeys." If pet insurance claims satisfaction continues to decline as pandemic-era pets age, MGAs and carriers in that niche will face severe loss-ratio pressure alongside a collapse in customer retention. The industry must move toward more transparent, proactive claims handling to prevent a total reversal of recent trust gains.