Most reviews of this company argue about whether it is cheap. That argument cannot be settled here, because no insurer publishes a rate for an individual driving record and this site does not print premium figures. What can be settled, from documents the company publishes about itself, is a question almost nobody asks and every SR-22 driver has a stake in: which company would actually be liable on your policy, and is it even inside the group the advertising names?
The answer changes by state, and in one state the company named is explicitly outside the group.
Start with what the brand tells you about itself. The footer of The General's own SR-22 page, read on 2 September 2026, opens with a sentence about the entity you are dealing with:
"The General Automobile Insurance Services, Inc., an insurance agency, writes insurance through affiliated and unaffiliated partners."
An agency, not an insurer. The next sentence names the group behind the paper: "The General® brand property and casualty coverages are underwritten by a member of the Sentry Insurance Group, Stevens Point, WI." That much is already covered on our pillar page, The General vs Dairyland, which found the same disclosure on both brands and concluded it could not identify equivalent state-level disclosures beyond Texas. This page found them.
The name on your policy will not be The General
The same footer points somewhere else: "For a complete listing of companies, see our legal page." That page — The General's legal disclosures — names companies for two states, and only two. Cross-referencing those names against Dairyland's published list of underwriting companies, which carries an NAIC number for each entry, produces the table below. Nobody publishes it because it only exists once you read two brands' small print side by side.
| Where |
Company The General names as underwriter |
On Dairyland's published list? |
NAIC# |
Source, read 2026-09-02 |
| Texas |
Dairyland County Mutual Insurance Company of Texas, Austin, TX |
Yes |
26441 |
thegeneral.com legal page; dairylandinsurance.com list |
| Texas (alternative) |
Old American County Mutual Fire Insurance Company, Dallas, TX |
No |
Not published on either page |
thegeneral.com legal page |
| California |
Viking Insurance Company of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, WI |
Yes |
13137 |
thegeneral.com legal page; dairylandinsurance.com list |
| California (alternative) |
Permanent General Assurance Corporation, Stevens Point, WI |
No |
Not published on either page |
thegeneral.com legal page |
| The other 48 states and DC |
Not named — "a member of the Sentry Insurance Group" |
n/a |
n/a |
thegeneral.com SR-22 page footer |
Three things fall out of that which neither company states.
The overlap is not a Texas curiosity. It happens again in California, and California is the larger book. In both of the two states where The General names names, one of the two named companies also appears on Dairyland's own published list. Whatever independence the two brands have, it is not independence of carrier in the two biggest states in the country. If you are shopping in either, the state pages for Texas and California are where the filing requirements themselves live.
One of the four named companies is disclosed as being outside the group. The SR-22 page's own footer describes the Texas alternative as "Old American County Mutual Fire Insurance Company, a nonaffiliated entity." So a Texas driver buying a policy branded The General, which advertises the financial strength of the Sentry group, may end up with a certificate issued by a company the brand itself says is not affiliated with it. That is disclosed, in the footnote of a marketing page, and it is the single most consequential sentence on the site for anyone who cares who owes them money after a claim.
In 48 states and the District of Columbia, you cannot find out before you quote. The disclosure stops at "a member of the Sentry Insurance Group." Which member is a question the quote answers and the website does not.
That matters because the entity you check with a regulator is the entity on the certificate. The Texas Department of Insurance's auto insurance shopping guide reduces the pre-purchase homework to two instructions: "Look at a company's complaint record" and "Make sure the company is licensed." Neither instruction can be carried out against a brand name. The NAIC's Consumer Information Source is a company-by-company lookup for the same reason, and tells users to "check your state's insurance department website to confirm the Company or HMO is licensed." Searching "The General" and searching "Old American County Mutual Fire Insurance Company" are different searches with potentially different answers, and only the second one is about the company that would pay.
What the company commits to on the filing, and what it does not
On the filing itself, The General publishes more operational detail than most of its competitors — and the detail is worth reading for what it declines to promise.
On price of the filing, the page says: "It varies by state, but a filing fee or premium surcharge may be applied when filing SR-22 form." That sentence hedges twice. It is a fee or a surcharge, and it may be applied. The follow-on sentence explains why no number appears anywhere: "The General includes the SR-22 insurance fee with your insurance quote." If the charge is folded into the premium, there is no separate figure to publish, which means any page quoting you a specific filing fee for this company is not quoting the company. Ask for it as its own line, and ask whether it repeats each renewal.
On geography, there is a real constraint stated plainly: "Please note in most states The General can only file an SR-22 in the state where your auto insurance policy has been issued." If your case and your policy are in different states — after a move, or with a second state's case still open — this is the sentence to raise before buying rather than after. Our guide to moving to another state with an SR-22 explains why that situation is more common than it sounds.
On speed, the page claims "In just minutes, you'll have your SR-22 form available," and elsewhere that you can "apply for and buy your policy, complete with SR-22 form, in about 12 minutes." Note where the claim stops: at the form being available to you. The clock that decides whether you can legally drive belongs to the state, not to the insurer. Wisconsin — Sentry's own home state, and therefore the regulator that knows this group best — publishes the other half. The state DMV's SR22 page, read through the Internet Archive capture of wisconsindot.gov because the live host refused our connection, says: "The electronically filed information is usually entered automatically on the customer's driver record within one to two working days."
The same page adds two conditions the insurer's marketing never mentions, and both are ways a fast filing still fails:
"You must submit the actual SR22 certificate, we are unable to accept an insurance summary or other general proof of insurance."
and, on the wording of the certificate itself, that the box for "All owned and non-owned (vehicles)" must be indicated, while the phrase "All owned and non-owned automobiles" "is not acceptable." A one-word difference in a printed form is enough for Wisconsin to reject a filing. That is the level at which these documents are actually checked, and it is a good reason to read what an SR-22 actually is before assuming a fast confirmation email means anything.
One more line on the company's page is worth quoting because it is a warning rather than a sales point: "if your insurance company has filed an SR-22 filing and you cancel your insurance policy, then you should expect revocation of your license and registration." That is what an SR-26 does when it reaches the state. And for drivers without a car, the page states an eligibility rule most people get wrong: "If you are living with the person who owns the car you drive, you may not be eligible for non-owner SR-22 insurance" — which is the first thing to check before asking for a non-owner SR-22.
The one figure on the page with nothing behind it
Amid all that hedging, the same page prints one confident quantitative claim:
"Currently, a driver convicted of a DUI can expect to see their premium rise by as much as 375% in North Carolina, and as little as 48% in Indiana. In the majority of states, rates rise between 70 and 80%."
This page reproduces those figures once, to say what is missing from them, and does not adopt them. There is no source, no date, no sample size and no method attached to them anywhere on the page. "Currently" is doing a great deal of work for a sentence with no compilation date. Everything else on that same page is carefully conditional — may be applied, most states, most drivers — and then this. When a page hedges every claim it can be held to and states precisely the one it cannot, the pattern itself is the finding. Our own guide on what an SR-22 costs explains why any figure of this shape needs its sample before it means anything, and the situation page on SR-22 after a DUI covers the part that is actually verifiable: the licensing consequences.
The same instinct shows up in the financial-strength boast. The page's marketing footer states that "Sentry has an AM Best Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A+ (superior), current as of June 2025." That rating is real and it is dated, which is more than the percentages get. But Wisconsin's insurance regulator warns readers not to stretch it. The Office of the Commissioner of Insurance's Consumer's Guide to Auto Insurance, PI-057 (R 07/2025) — read through the Internet Archive capture of oci.wi.gov, the live host being unreachable from here — says of rating agencies:
"These rating organizations do not rate the quality of the insurer's policies, practices, agents, or services."
An A+ says the company can pay. It says nothing about whether it will file your certificate correctly or answer the phone, which are the two things an SR-22 driver actually needs.
That same guide is also where the honest version of this company's market position comes from — written by a regulator rather than by a marketing department. It defines the "Nonstandard" category as one "intended for drivers that insurance companies consider high-risk," including "drivers with tickets or accidents, drivers with a poor premium payment history, and drivers with a reckless or drunk driving history." That is the segment The General sells into, and PI-057 notes plainly that drivers in it "usually have the highest rates." It also records that a driver who cannot find cover at all is not out of options: Wisconsin routes them to a last-resort residual plan. Acceptance, in other words, is not unique to any one brand, which takes some of the weight off the "they said yes" argument. If you want the same brand measured against a direct competitor rather than against itself, The General vs SafeAuto does that comparison.
What I could not verify
Which company underwrites The General outside Texas and California. The legal disclosures page names companies for those two states only. For the other 49 jurisdictions the disclosure stops at "a member of the Sentry Insurance Group," and no page on the site resolves it. The only place the answer exists is your own quote.
Whether Old American County Mutual Fire Insurance Company is licensed in your state, and what its complaint record looks like. The lookups at the NAIC and at state insurance departments run as database queries rather than as fixed pages that can be cited with a date, so no figure from them is reproduced here. The method is above; the company name to type is the one on your certificate.
Any filing fee amount. The company states only that a fee or surcharge "may" apply and that it is folded into the quote. No figure is published, so none appears here.
The percentage increases quoted above. No source, date or method is attached to them on the page, and none was found elsewhere on the site. They are quoted as an example of an unsupported claim, not adopted as a finding.
Whether both brands still operate separately. Sentry's acquisition announcement, dated 12 September 2024, said "Both brands will continue to operate independently as Sentry and The General work through the integration process." That was a statement of intent made before the deal closed, not a commitment about 2026, and this page does not treat it as one.
Whether PI-057 addresses SR-22 filings. It does not. The guide was read in full and contains no reference to SR-22 or SR22 certificates; it is cited here only for the nonstandard market definition, the licensing lookup and the ratings caveat. Wisconsin's SR-22 material lives with the DMV, cited above, not with the insurance regulator.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The General an insurance company?
Not as the entity you buy from. Its own disclosure describes "The General Automobile Insurance Services, Inc., an insurance agency," which "writes insurance through affiliated and unaffiliated partners," and says the brand's coverages are underwritten by a member of the Sentry Insurance Group. Its legal disclosures page names the underwriter in two states only: in Texas, Dairyland County Mutual Insurance Company of Texas or Old American County Mutual Fire Insurance Company, and in California, Viking Insurance Company of Wisconsin or Permanent General Assurance Corporation. Everywhere else the company on your policy is disclosed to you at quote time and not before.
How much does The General charge to file an SR-22?
It does not publish an amount, and it declines to say whether the charge is a fee or a surcharge: the page says only that "a filing fee or premium surcharge may be applied when filing SR-22 form," adding that it "includes the SR-22 insurance fee with your insurance quote." Because it is folded into the premium, the number exists on your quote and nowhere else, so ask for it as a separate line and ask whether it recurs at renewal. Any page quoting a specific figure for this company is not quoting the company.
Can The General file an SR-22 for a state other than the one my policy is in?
Usually not. The page states: "Please note in most states The General can only file an SR-22 in the state where your auto insurance policy has been issued." That is a genuine operational limit and one of the few this company publishes outright, so if your case and your policy sit in different states, get the answer in writing before you buy rather than discovering it after the policy is issued.
How quickly does the filing actually reach the state?
The company's claim covers your copy of the form, not the state's record: "In just minutes, you'll have your SR-22 form available." The state's own clock is separate. Wisconsin's DMV, in the state where this group is headquartered, says electronically filed information "is usually entered automatically on the customer's driver record within one to two working days," insists on "the actual SR22 certificate" rather than a summary, and rejects the wording "All owned and non-owned automobiles" outright. A fast confirmation from an insurer is not the same event as a completed filing.
