The auto insurance industry have been showing a remarkable growth in written premiums from the start of year 2013 and showed remarkable increase from previous years, said SNL Financial, a business and finance data firm.

SNL Financial recently released a report showing that in the first quarter of 2013, car insurers all over the country have recorded a total of $47.4 billion in auto premiums. But according to their market share data analysis, more than fifty percent of these premiums were written by only five insurance companies.

The said report showed that State Farm remains the leading auto insurer by premiums. The said insurer holds $8.4 billion of insurance premiums in the first quarter, and is leading the market by a wide margin from GEICO’s $4.7 billion.

GEICO was able to surpassed Allstate this year as the latter only have $4.5 billion. Apparently, GEICO was able to have an increase in their insurance premiums this year while Allstate suffered a drop of around 1.6 percent. A report from the Chicago Tribune said that Allstate who used to hold the number two spot in being the top-seller for auto insurance for a long time next to State Farm, lost a number a number of their consumers due to higher rates. However, industry analysts believe that Allstate might be able to regain the number two spot when the data from the second quarter will be tallied.

The rise in auto insurance premiums this year has been attributed to the consistent increase of premium prices across the industry in the last two years. SNL Financial said that insurance companies have been hiking up their prices so as to cope up with the post-recession interest rates and surged in disaster claims.

As for their advertising, SNL reported that State Farm has reduced its advertising expenditures to only $778 million, 4 percent lower to what they have paid for last year. On the other hand, Allstate is expending around $829 million for this year.