The Progressive Corporation
Property and Casualty InsuranceFounded 1937- Updated July 2025
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Last reviewed: July 2025
BrandHistories
The Progressive Corporation
Company History
Founded 1937 in Mayfield Village, Ohio, United States
Last reviewed: 2025-07-15 · By Swet Parvadiya
The Progressive Corporation is the United States' largest personal auto insurer by policy count, writing $73.4 billion in net premiums earned in 2024 across 31 million policies in personal auto, commercial auto, and property segments. Founded in 1937 by Joseph M. Lewis and Jack Green in Cleveland, Ohio, Progressive built its competitive identity by serving non-standard risks that conventional insurers refused, and then transformed the entire industry by inventing telematics-based pricing in 1988. The company's Snapshot program collects 30 billion miles of real driving data annually from enrolled policyholders, feeding a machine learning actuarial model trained on 300 billion cumulative miles that generates the most precise individual risk pricing in the global insurance industry. This pricing precision produces Progressive's defining financial result: a combined ratio of 94.8 in 2024, generating $5.20 in underwriting profit per $100 of premium, while the industry average combined ratio of 102.4 means the market loses money underwriting and must rely on investment income to generate any overall profitability. CEO Tricia Griffith, who has led the company since 2016, has grown annual premiums from $22.7 billion to $73.4 billion while maintaining the combined ratio discipline that defines Progressive's brand promise to investors.
Joseph Lewis co-founded Progressive Mutual Insurance Company in 1937 in Mayfield Village, Ohio. He and Jack Green built the company around insuring drivers that mainstream carriers rejected — a segment with worse average loss ratios but far less competition and greater pricing flexibility. Lewis helped establish Progressive as a regional specialty insurer across its early decades. His decision to remain in the nonstandard segment, rather than pursuing mainstream business, created the claims data and pricing infrastructure that his son Peter Lewis later used to build Progressive into a national carrier.
Jack Green co-founded Progressive Mutual Insurance in 1937 with Joseph Lewis. Together they built the company on the premise that high-risk drivers represented an underpriced and underserved market. Green helped establish the early claims operations and administrative infrastructure during Progressive foundational years as a small regional carrier. The willingness to insure nonstandard drivers gradually gave Progressive actuarial advantages as it accumulated loss data that mainstream carriers lacked, advantages that later powered the company analytical pricing model under Peter Lewis.
Progressive acquired ARX Holding, the parent company of American Strategic Insurance, to enter the homeowners insurance market and offer customers the ability to bundle home and auto coverage. Bundling is a key retention tool in personal insurance as customers with multiple policies have significantly lower cancellation rates.
Progressive acquired Protective Insurance Corporation to expand its commercial lines insurance capabilities, particularly in trucking and transportation insurance where Protective had specialized expertise. Commercial auto insurance was a growing priority for Progressive as it sought to diversify beyond personal auto.
Progressive invested in Homeowners of America Holdings to expand homeowners insurance coverage in markets where ASI did not have strong presence. The investment complemented Progressive strategy of offering comprehensive home and auto bundles to reduce customer churn across its growing policyholder base.