The Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO /ˈɡaɪkoʊ/) is a private American auto insurance company with headquarters in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It is the second largest auto insurer in the United States, after State Farm.[4] GEICO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that provides coverage for more than 24 million motor vehicles owned by more than 15 million policy holders as of 2017. GEICO writes private passenger automobile insurance in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The insurance agency sells policies through local agents, called GEICO Field Representatives, over the phone directly to the consumer via licensed insurance agents, and through their website. Its mascot is a gold dust day gecko with a Cockney accent, voiced by English actor Jake Wood. GEICO is well known in popular culture for its advertising, having made numerous commercials intended to entertain viewers.
Despite the presence of the word "government" in its name, GEICO has always been a private corporation not affiliated with any U.S. government organization. Leo Goodwin Sr. and his wife Lillian Goodwin originally founded the company in 1936 to sell auto insurance to federal government employees.[5]
GEICO also offers property insurance, as well as umbrella coverage which GEICO sells, but the risk on the policies are transferred to third party companies. GEICO manages the policies as the "insurance agent" and has a separate customer care team that handles the property and umbrella policies.
GEICO was founded in 1936 by Leo Goodwin Sr. and his wife Lillian Goodwin to provide auto insurance directly to federal government employees and their families.[5] Since 1925, Goodwin had worked for USAA, an insurer that specialized in insuring only military personnel. He decided to start his own company after rising as far as a civilian could go in USAA's military-dominated hierarchy. The Goodwins funded the creation of GEICO with $25,000 of their own money and $75,000 from Fort Worth, Texas-based banker Cleaves Rhea, with legal a-sistance from future GEICO CEO Lorimer Davidson.[1] Based on Goodwin's experience at USAA, GEICO's original business model was predicated on the a-sumption that federal employees, as a group, would constitute a less risky and more financially stable pool of insureds compared to the general public.
In 1937, the Goodwins relocated GEICO from San Antonio, Texas to Washington, D.C. and reincorporated the company as a D.C. corporation after realizing that their business model would work best in the place with the highest concentration of federal employees.[6]
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