Jan. 31, 2023—Two of America’s largest insurance providers, Progressive and State Farm, refuse to cover older Hyundai and Kia models.
According to reports, the insurers say that some models of these two auto brands are too easy to steal in certain cities.
In Denver, Colorado and St. Louis, Missouri, Progressive and State Farm have stopped writing policies for these vehicles altogether.
"State Farm has temporarily stopped writing new business in some states for certain model years and trim levels of Hyundai and Kia vehicles because theft losses for these vehicles have increased dramatically," the insurer told CNN. "This is a serious problem impacting our customers and the entire auto insurance industry."
The problem stemmed from viral TikTok videos demonstrating how easily Hyundai and Kia vehicles could be broken into and stolen.
Cites Highway Loss Data Institute reports, some 2015 through 2019 Hyundai and Kia models “are roughly twice as likely to be stolen as other vehicles of similar age, because many of them lack some of the basic auto theft prevention technology included in most other vehicles in those years.”
"During the past year we've seen theft rates for certain Hyundai and Kia vehicles more than triple and in some markets, these vehicles are almost 20 times more likely to be stolen than other vehicles," wrote Progressive spokesman Jeff Sibel. "Given that we price our policies based on the level of risk they represent, this explosive increase in thefts in many cases makes these vehicles extremely challenging for us to insure. In response, in some geographic areas, we have increased our rates and limited our sale of new insurance policies on some of these models."
