Insurance companies in Illinois: 7,509 offices, the Bloomington and Chicago insurers, and how to check them

This page is for anyone in Illinois looking for an insurance company: to buy a policy or settle a claim, to find work, or to sell technology and services to insurers and agencies. It counts carriers and agencies statewide, shows where they are beyond Chicago, names the insurers based here from filings and the state's own market data, and explains how to check one. It doesn't recommend carriers.

The statewide count

County Business Patterns 2023; average pay is our calculation. The carrier total also includes 175 title insurer offices (employment flagged high-noise), other direct insurers and reinsurers. Illinois ranks fifth among the states for carrier establishments and sixth for carrier employment, fifth for agency and related establishments and fourth for their employment. The third-party administrator figure stands out: 55,150 people at average pay of $34,724, which pulls the industry's average down; carriers and agencies both pay above $100,000.

Illinois has 6,883 establishments under 20 employees, 422 with 20 to 99 and 204 with 100 or more: 4.26% of the country's 176,459. The counts are establishments with paid employees, so one company's offices count separately and solo agents without staff are left out.

Beyond Chicago

The nine Illinois counties of the Chicago metro hold 4,966 insurance establishments, 847 of them carrier offices. The rest of the state has 2,537, including 354 carrier offices and 2,001 agencies; another 56 carrier establishments are recorded statewide without a county. Downstate, three places stand out:

McLean County's 20 carrier offices average about 810 employees each. The Census Bureau doesn't name them, but the state's market share report shows who writes from Illinois charters: State Farm Fire and Casualty Company wrote 33.68% of Illinois homeowners premium in 2025 and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company 28.09% of private passenger auto liability premium, and Country Preferred Insurance Company, also Illinois-chartered, was second in homeowners with 7.84%. Tennessee's registry of licensed insurers (as of 30 September 2026) lists 13 Illinois-chartered insurers with main offices in Bloomington, those three among them. It also shows Horace Mann companies in Springfield, and RLI Insurance Company and Illinois Mutual Life Insurance Company in Peoria.

Insurers headquartered in Illinois

Nine SEC-listed insurance companies give Illinois headquarters in their 2025 10-K filings. Seven are in the Chicago area: Allstate (Northbrook, $67.69 billion of 2025 revenue), CNA Financial ($14.99 billion), Arthur J. Gallagher (Rolling Meadows, $13.94 billion), Old Republic International ($9.14 billion), Kemper ($4.79 billion), Ryan Specialty ($3.05 billion) and Kingsway Financial Services ($135.0 million). Two are downstate:

Most Illinois-chartered insurers aren't listed. In the state's 2025 property and casualty market share report, about 1,200 companies wrote premium in Illinois, roughly 170 of them domiciled in the state, by our count of the report's company tables. For the Chicago metro in detail and national rankings, see those pages.

The market, by line

The Illinois Department of Insurance's 2025 Market Share Report puts property and casualty direct premiums written in Illinois at $40.39 billion, including licensed insurers, surplus lines insurers and risk retention groups. Homeowners was the largest line at $6.94 billion (17.18%); private passenger auto liability ($5.88 billion) and physical damage ($5.27 billion) together made up 27.6%; workers' compensation was $2.44 billion; and multiple peril crop insurance was $972.6 million, a reminder of how much of downstate insurance follows farming. Shares are of premium written, not a measure of service or price.

Checking a company or agent, and the complaint record

1. Agent or agency: the Illinois Department of Insurance (IDOI) Agent Lookup opens the NAIC's licensee search; set the jurisdiction to Illinois and confirm the license is Active.
2. Complaints: IDOI publishes an annual Consumer Complaints Ratio Report. In 2025 it recorded 10,113 complaints, up 1.0% from 10,017: 7,556 about property and casualty insurance, 1,686 about health products and 871 about life, annuity and long-term care. Auto (3,786) and homeowners (2,864) were the biggest lines. Ratios divide each company's complaints by its Illinois earned premium (complaints per $1 million), for companies with five or more complaints in a line.
3. Elsewhere: the NAIC's Consumer Insurance Search gives complaint, license and financial reports for the same company nationally.
4. To complain: go to the company first, then file with IDOI.

Jobs

Illinois carriers paid an average of $115,015 in 2023 and agencies $106,350, both above the national averages of $107,137 and $90,831 (our calculation from County Business Patterns). Reinsurers averaged $188,699. Downstate, the corporate jobs are concentrated in Bloomington, with Springfield and Peoria next.

Selling to Illinois agencies outside Chicago

Downstate agencies are small, often family-owned, and many write farm and crop insurance alongside home and auto. They buy agency management and rating software, crop insurance tools, websites and local marketing, and the owner decides.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are invented.

Prairie Acre (prairie-acre.example) sells software that maps a crop insurance customer's fields and tracks acreage reporting deadlines. It targets the 2,001 agencies outside the Chicago metro's Illinois counties and keeps those advertising crop insurance, an assumed 15%, or 300. A short email and a follow-up call to each owner before the spring sales closing season, at a 5% reply rate, gives 15 conversations; three customers at $6,000 a year add $18,000. Finding the crop writers among 2,001 agencies is the research Bebop does for each account.

Next step: compare the wider business market in companies in Illinois.