Is Kemper Auto Insurance Good for New York Drivers?

Last Updated on October 4, 2026 by James Shaffer

Kemper is a specialty auto insurer that focuses heavily on drivers who may have difficulty qualifying for standard or preferred-market coverage. In New York, several Kemper-affiliated insurance companies remain licensed for automobile insurance lines, but availability can vary by underwriting company, location, agent, and driver profile.

Kemper has also changed significantly in recent years. In 2023, the company announced that it was exiting its separate preferred home and auto business, Kemper Personal Insurance, while continuing to operate its specialty auto business under the Kemper Auto brand. As a result, some Kemper products and package names described in older reviews are no longer representative of what shoppers should expect today.

About Kemper Corporation

The present-day Kemper Corporation grew out of Unitrin, a holding company created after a 1990 spinoff from Teledyne. Unitrin purchased Kemper’s personal lines business in 2002 and officially changed its corporate name to Kemper Corporation in 2011. You can read more about the company’s history in Kemper’s announcement of the name change.

Today, Kemper’s core businesses are specialty automobile insurance and life insurance. According to the company’s 2025 annual report, its Specialty Property & Casualty segment focuses on personal auto customers who may have difficulty obtaining standard or preferred insurance because of factors such as driving records, claims history, or premium payment history.

A particularly important change occurred in August 2023, when Kemper announced that it would exit its preferred home and auto insurance business. That decision did not apply to the specialty Kemper Auto operation. This distinction matters because many older Kemper reviews combine products from the former preferred business with today’s specialty auto offerings.

Is Kemper Car Insurance Available in New York?

Kemper Corporation has multiple underwriting subsidiaries, and New York Department of Financial Services records show Kemper group companies licensed for automobile liability and physical damage lines in the state. However, an insurer being licensed in New York does not mean every product is open to every applicant or available through every agent.

Kemper states that its products, discounts, and services are subject to state availability and underwriting eligibility. New York drivers should therefore confirm current availability by requesting a quote or contacting a Kemper-appointed independent agent rather than relying on an older list of states or products.

Kemper Auto Coverage in New York

Any personal auto policy issued for a New York-registered vehicle must satisfy New York’s insurance requirements. According to the New York State Department of Financial Services, required coverage includes liability insurance, basic no-fault coverage, and uninsured motorists protection.

Coverage or Feature	What New York Drivers Should Know
Liability	New York requires at least $25,000 bodily injury liability per person, $50,000 per accident, and $10,000 property damage liability, with higher minimum limits when an accident results in death.
No-Fault / PIP	Basic New York no-fault coverage provides up to $50,000 per person for qualifying economic losses resulting from an auto accident.
Uninsured Motorists	New York requires bodily injury protection for qualifying accidents involving an uninsured or hit-and-run vehicle in New York.
Collision and Comprehensive	Optional coverages that can protect your own vehicle. A lender or leasing company may require them when a vehicle is financed or leased.
Roadside Assistance and Rental Reimbursement	Kemper advertises these as optional auto coverages, but availability and terms depend on the specific policy and state.

The required liability portion of a New York policy is explained in more detail in our guide to New York auto liability insurance.

For damage to your own vehicle, Kemper currently advertises both collision coverage and comprehensive coverage. Collision generally applies to covered crash damage, while comprehensive generally applies to covered non-collision losses such as theft, vandalism, fire, hail, or falling objects.

New York also requires uninsured motorists bodily injury coverage. Drivers can consider broader uninsured and underinsured motorist protection through Supplementary Uninsured/Underinsured Motorists (SUM) coverage, subject to New York rules and the limits selected on the policy.

Another important distinction is New York’s mandatory personal injury protection, or PIP. Basic no-fault coverage provides up to $50,000 per person for qualifying medical expenses, lost earnings, and certain other necessary expenses. PIP should not be confused with medical payments coverage, which is a different coverage concept and is not part of New York’s mandatory minimum package.

Optional Kemper Auto Coverage

Kemper’s current consumer materials also advertise optional roadside assistance and rental reimbursement. Roadside assistance can include services such as towing, jump-starts, fuel delivery, lockout assistance, and tire changes. You can compare this type of protection with other roadside assistance options.

Kemper offers additional auto options in some markets, but availability differs by state and underwriting company. When considering any additional auto insurance coverage, ask the agent to show you the actual New York endorsement or policy form rather than relying on a nationwide feature list.

What Happened to Kemper Total and Prime Auto Enhanced?

Older Kemper reviews frequently describe products such as Kemper Total, broad-form coverage, and Kemper Prime Auto Enhanced. Those descriptions largely came from Kemper’s former preferred personal-lines operation.

Kemper announced in 2023 that it was winding down the preferred home and auto business, and these legacy package names are not featured as standard Kemper Auto products on the company’s current personal-auto pages. New York shoppers therefore should not assume that older features such as new-car replacement, a diminishing deductible, or accident forgiveness are included or currently available through Kemper. Check the quote and policy forms for the specific coverage being offered.

Does Kemper Offer SR-22 Insurance in New York?

Kemper advertises SR-22 filing services in states where an SR-22 is used. However, New York handles proof of automobile liability insurance differently. The New York DMV requires insurers to report New York liability coverage electronically, and an insurance ID card by itself does not establish continuing coverage in DMV records.

For that reason, New York drivers should not assume they need an SR-22 simply because their license or registration was suspended. If another state has specifically ordered you to maintain an SR-22, the requirement may still follow you even after moving to New York. In that situation, ask the insurer whether it can satisfy the filing required by that state. Our SR-22 insurance guide explains how these filings generally work.

Kemper Pricing and Discounts

There is no single Kemper rate that applies to New York drivers. Your premium depends on your location, vehicle, coverage limits, deductibles, driving history, insurance history, and other rating factors permitted under New York law. Your driving record can have a significant effect on your car insurance rate, particularly when shopping in the nonstandard market.

Kemper’s current discount page lists several potential savings opportunities, although not every discount is available in every state or through every underwriting company. Examples include:

• Proof-of-prior-insurance discounts for qualifying customers with previous coverage
• Advance quote or advance purchase discounts
• Paid-in-full discounts
• Multi-car discounts
• Defensive-driving discounts for qualifying courses
• Good-student discounts for qualifying full-time students
• Homeowner discounts
• Kemper Co-Pilot telematics discounts in participating states

Kemper’s current public discount materials do not advertise every discount that appeared in older Kemper reviews. For example, shoppers should not automatically assume that a discount for anti-theft equipment applies to a current New York Kemper Auto policy. Ask the agent for the complete discount list tied to the quote.

What About Bundling?

Older Kemper materials often promoted discounts for combining auto insurance with homeowners or renters coverage. Because Kemper decided to exit its separate preferred home and auto business in 2023, shoppers should not assume a traditional Kemper home-and-auto package is currently available. If bundling is important to you, compare the total cost of separate policies against insurers that currently offer a home and auto insurance bundle.

Kemper’s Complaint Record in New York

New York’s Department of Financial Services ranks auto insurers every year by upheld complaints per $1 million of premiums. A complaint is upheld when DFS agrees the insurer handled something wrong, such as a late no-fault payment or an improper nonrenewal. The 2025 report covers complaints closed in 2024 and ranks 128 companies. Across all of them combined, the ratio was 0.0341.

Kemper writes New York policies through Kemper Independence Insurance Company and several Unitrin companies, which are also part of Kemper. Their premium volume is small, so a few upheld complaints move the ratio a lot.

Company	Rank (of 128)	Upheld Complaints	Complaint Ratio
Unitrin Preferred Insurance Company	39	0	0.0000
Unitrin Direct Insurance Company	46	0	0.0000
Unitrin Safeguard Insurance Company	103	4	0.1371
Kemper Independence Insurance Company	115	4	0.2099
Unitrin Auto and Home Insurance Company	120	1	0.3853

Taken together, the five Kemper companies had 9 upheld complaints on about $55 million of yearly New York auto premiums, a combined ratio of 0.1632. That’s worse than the 0.0341 figure for the whole market. In the previous report (complaints closed in 2023), the same companies had 10 upheld complaints and a ratio of 0.1484, against 0.0275 for all insurers that year.

Those premiums add up to 0.3% of the private passenger auto premiums counted in the DFS report. That share is our own calculation from the DFS figures, not an official market share number, but it gives a rough sense of how much of the New York market Kemper insures.

DFS points out that the ranking counts only complaints filed with the department, and that one or two extra upheld complaints can move a smaller insurer a long way. Use it alongside price, coverage and claims service, and match it to the company named on your quote or declarations page.

Kemper Financial Strength

Kemper’s website reports an A- (Excellent) AM Best financial strength rating for the insurance companies of the Kemper Property & Casualty Group and Kemper Life Group as of August 2025. Kemper notes that American Access Casualty Company is not rated by AM Best.

A financial strength rating is an opinion about an insurer’s ability to meet ongoing insurance obligations. It is useful when comparing companies, but it does not measure price, customer service, or whether a particular policy is appropriate for you.

Kemper Customer Service and Claims

Kemper policyholders can use the company’s website and mobile app to access policy documents, download insurance ID cards, make payments, report claims, and review claim information.

According to Kemper’s current claims information, new auto claims can be reported online or by calling 800-353-6737. Kemper currently lists telephone hours for new Auto, Home, and Commercial Auto claims as Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Central Time and Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Central Time. Existing auto-claim support is generally handled through the assigned adjuster during regular business hours.

If roadside assistance was purchased with the policy, Kemper states that roadside service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

When researching customer complaints, remember that Kemper Auto policies can be written by different legal insurance companies. The NAIC Consumer Insurance Search allows consumers to research complaint, licensing, and financial information for the specific underwriting company rather than relying only on reviews of the Kemper brand as a whole.

Who Might Consider Kemper Auto?

Kemper Auto’s specialty-market focus may make it worth including in a quote comparison for drivers who have had difficulty finding coverage in the standard market. That can include drivers with accidents, tickets, prior insurance problems, or other underwriting issues. This can also be relevant for new drivers in New York.

Families adding a teenager may also want to compare Kemper if it is available to them, particularly because Kemper currently advertises a qualifying good-student discount. However, young-driver insurance is generally expensive across the market, so it is still important to compare several quotes. Our guide explains why insurance costs more for young drivers.

Reasons to Compare Kemper With Other Insurers

Kemper’s specialty focus will not necessarily make it the lowest-priced option for every New York driver. The company also does not publish a single New York average premium that can reliably predict what an individual applicant will pay.

Product availability is another reason to compare carefully. Some coverage packages commonly associated with Kemper in older articles belonged to the preferred insurance business that Kemper began exiting in 2023. Current Kemper Auto coverages and discounts vary by state and underwriting company.

The most useful comparison is therefore based on actual quotes with the same liability limits, deductibles, physical-damage coverage, optional endorsements, and driver information. A cheaper quote may provide materially different protection, so compare the coverage details as well as the premium.

Bottom Line on Kemper Car Insurance in New York

Kemper today is primarily a specialty auto insurer rather than the broad preferred home-and-auto company described in many older reviews. Its Kemper Auto operation may provide another option for New York drivers, particularly those shopping outside the preferred market, but actual availability, discounts, and coverage options depend on the specific underwriting company and applicant.

Before purchasing a policy, verify that it includes New York’s required coverage, review any optional endorsements carefully, check the legal name of the insurer issuing the policy, and compare the quote against several competing insurers using equivalent coverage limits.

FAQs on Kemper Car Insurance in New York