GEICO which stands for Government Employees Insurance Company is an American auto insurance company and wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

GEICO as of 2007 provided coverage for more than 10 million motor vehicles owned by more than 9 million policy holders both in Washington DC and all 50 US states.

Quick Geico Stats

Type – Subsidiary
Industry – Insurance
Founded – Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. (1936)
Headquarters – Chevy Chase, Maryland, U.S.
Key people – Tony Nicely,Chairman, President & CEO
Products – Auto insurance
Revenue – US$9.212 billion (2004)
Employees – 24,000
Parent – Berkshire Hathaway
Website – www.geico.com

GEICO TV Commecials

GEICO has many well known ad campaigns, such as GEICO pothole commercial, GEICO money with eyes, GEICO gecko doing the robot and cavemen most involving the tagline “Geico, fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.”

Ads have also included well-known GEICO mascots “Mallory the GEICO gecko” and the GEICO Cavemen who were the stars of the short-lived sitcom (unrelated to GEICO) Cavemen. There are also GEICO commercials that feature stories from thei customers about situations in which the company assisted them, but are narrated by celebrities like Little Richard.

In the new Geico commercials, they have been doing the song Somebody’s Watching Me in the backgrouand a stack of Geico money with googly eyes stalking people which stands for or claims the money, people could be saving with GEICO.

Parodies and references to the ads have appeared on programs like Robot Chicken and Late Show with David Letterman.

Brief History Of GEICO

GEICO was founded in 1936 by Leo Goodwin and his wife Lillian to provide auto insurance directly to federal government employees and their families. Goodwin had worked since 1925 for USAA, an insurer which 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.

Based on Goodwin’s experience at USAA, GEICO’s original business model was predicated on the assumption that federal employees as a group would constitute a less risky and more financially stable pool of insureds, as opposed to the general public. Despite the presence of the word “government” in its name, GEICO has always been a private corporation.

In 1973, under Kreeger’s leadership, GEICO began to insure the general public, after real-time access to computerized driving records became available throughout the United States, and it was briefly the fifth-largest U.S. auto insurer.

Unfortunately, by 1975, it was clear that GEICO had expanded far too rapidly (during the brutal 1973–75 recession) when it reported an embarrassing $126.5 million loss. To prevent GEICO from collapsing, a consortium of 27 insurance companies agreed to take over a quarter of its policies, and it was forced to issue a stock offering (thus diluting existing stockholders) to raise money to pay claims. It took five years and a massive reorganization to set GEICO on the path to recovery.

Besides auto insurance, GEICO also offered other types of insurance during its history. From 1949 to 1981, GEICO’s sister company, the Government Employees Life Insurance Company (GELICO), offered life insurance, and from 1960 to 1995, GEICO offered homeowners’ insurance. Although GEICO has since focused on its core competency of auto insurance, it uses its established direct sales infrastructure to market geico homeowners insurance and many other types of insurance underwritten by other insurance companies.

In 1996, after many years as a publicly-traded firm, GEICO became a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, chaired by the famous Warren Buffet.

Competition

GEICO’s major competitors include State Farm, Allstate, Progressive, Nationwide, and USAA. Progressive is targeted in many GEICO commercials in order to counter Progressive’s claims of being able to quote their rates and those of several of their competitors’ by stating that GEICO quotes are only available at GEICO.com.

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