Progressive history

Although licensed to write all types of automobile and casualty insurance, they limited themselves to auto insurance, and by 1940 were writing about $100,000 worth of insurance annually.

People finally had jobs and money, so they could afford cars and insurance, but gas was rationed so they couldn’t drive and didn’t have many accidents.” The booming, car-crazy, postwar economy further accelerated Progressive’s business: premium revenues reached $480,000 by 1946.

Progressive grew in the postwar period, acquiring assets of $2 million and more than 25,000 policyholders in 1951, and establishing offices at 3600 EUCLID AVE. and branches in Akron and Youngstown.

Accordingly, Progressive Casualty was formed in 1956 to write policies for those drivers who had trouble finding coverage elsewhere.

In 1965, Peter B. Lewis, son of Joseph Lewis, and his mother borrowed $2.5 million, pledging their majority stake as collateral, and completed a leveraged buyout of Progressive.

By 1970 Progressive Casualty, which accounted for 75% of the corporation's business, was writing its non-standard, high-risk auto insurance in Ohio and 8 other states.

Progressive became a publicly held company in 1971 and constructed a new corporate headquarters at 6300 Wilson Mills Rd. in MAYFIELD VILLAGE the following year.

Lewis, a long-time collector of art, first began the Progressive Corp.'s art collection in 1974, when he purchased Andy Warhol's Mao Tse Tung Series.

These pricing policies helped the company's premium volume increase to $157.3 million by 1980.

In 1986, the company wrote over $830 million in premiums, over five times as much as it had at the beginning of the decade.

By 1987, the corporate collection constituted over 1,000 pieces of award-winning contemporary art.

Following the passage of Proposition 103 in 1988, Progressive had backed away from the California market, laying off 800 workers at its Rancho Cordova office.

Lewis was characterized as "a brilliant and unusual man" in a 1990 Financial World profile, and he has been credited with the managerial savvy that kept Progressive in the vanguard of auto insurance.

In 1992, Progressive became the nation’s largest provider of automobile insurance through independent agents.

By 1993, Progressive had reduced its revenues from the state to $50 million and created a $150 million reserve to pay for rate rollbacks to 260,000 current and former policyholders.

Progressive continued its tradition of innovative services in 1994, when it introduced its 1-800-AUTO-PRO service.

In 1995, Progressive served its policyholders in the United States & Canada through more than 30,000 independent agents, 200 claims offices, and 7,500 employees nationwide and in Canada.

In 1996 the company announced its interest in taking into account personal credit histories, which reflected a customer's financial responsibility and how he chose to pay his bills, when setting their auto insurance rates in California, something which Progressive was able to do in other states.

The company had offered quotes over the Internet through its own Web site (www.progressive.com) since 1997 and was the first auto insurer to sell policies online.

Auto premiums accounted for 93 percent of Progressive's total net premiums written, which reached $5.3 billion in 1998.

By 1999 it was the fifth largest auto insurer in the United States and was set on becoming the largest.

In 2000, Lewis, then 66 years old, stepped down as CEO of the company, but remained chairman of the board.

By 2003, the Progressive Corp. was the third largest insurance company in the United States, with more $11.9 billion in written premiums, underwriting 12 million people.

In 2016, that number crossed the $20 billion mark.