Owner Scorecard
An independent research publication · records as of August 17, 2026

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DGICB, Donegal Group Inc.

Insurance — Property & Casualty financial

Donegal Group Inc., or DGI, is an insurance holding company whose insurance subsidiaries and affiliates offer property and casualty insurance in 21 Mid-Atlantic, Midwestern, Southern and Southwestern states.

The commercial lines products of our insurance subsidiaries consist primarily of commercial automobile, commercial multi-peril and workers' compensation policies.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
DGICB · Donegal Group Inc.
I

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025
$978M
−1.2% YoY · 5% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $963M 5-yr avg $914M
Combined ratio 97% 5-yr avg 101%
Loss ratio 62% 5-yr avg 66%
Return on equity 11% 5-yr avg 5%

Next report By 11/8 · the 10-Q for the quarter ended late September · due within 40 days of period end · has filed ~36 days after · the wire records it on arrival

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

What moves the needle
Underwriting discipline and the float. What decides it: whether the combined ratio stays below 100% so the policies make money on their own, how large the float is against equity, and what that float earns once it is invested. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?
It underwrites at a profit, about a 97% combined ratio (it keeps roughly 3% of premiums before investing the float). The float runs about 1.7× equity, the leverage that magnifies both the underwriting and the investing. Whether the discipline holds through a soft market, and how the float is invested, are what the 10-K decides.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2016’162017’172018’182019’192020’202021’212022’222023’232024’242025’25TTMTTMJun 2026
Income statement
$688M$739M$772M$812M$778M$816M$857M$927M$990M$978M$963MRevenueRevenue
$682M$729M$744M$753M$742M$804M$844M$896M$942M$905M—Premiums written (net)Prem. written
$656M$703M$741M$756M$742M$776M$822M$882M$937M$921M$901MPremiums earnedPremiums
$23M$24M$27M$30M$30M$31M$34M$41M$45M$53M$57MInvestment incomeInv. inc.
$41M$12M($48M)$57M$63M$30M($4M)$5M$62M$98M—Pretax incomePretax
$31M$7M($33M)$47M$53M$25M($2M)$4M$51M$79M$71MNet incomeNet inc.
25%41%—17%17%17%—13%18%19%19%Effective tax rateTax rate
Cash flow & returns
$60M$81M$64M$76M$101M$77M$67M$29M$67M$70M$58MOperating cash flowOp. cash
65%69%78%67%62%67%69%69%64%61%62%Loss ratioLoss
17%17%15%15%17%17%17%17%17%17%19%Expense ratioExpense
≈ 99%≈ 103%≈ 111%≈ 100%≈ 96%≈ 101%≈ 104%≈ 105%≈ 99%≈ 96%≈ 97%Combined ratioCombined
—+4.9%+13.6%−0.1%−4.1%+1.4%+3.6%+4.7%−1.1%−4.6%—Cost of float (avg)Float cost
$3M$7M$36M($13M)($13M)($31M)($45M)($17M)($15M)($10M)—Prior-yr reserve developmentReserve dev.
7%2%-8%10%10%5%-0%1%9%12%11%Return on equityROE
4%−2%−12%7%7%1%−5%−4%5%8%7%Retained to equityRetained/eq
$14M$15M$16M$16M$17M$19M$21M$22M$23M$26M$27MDividends paidDiv. paid
($51M)($58M)($38M)($43M)($100M)($62M)($98M)($17M)($48M)($91M)—Investing cash flowInv. cash
($12M)($9M)($11M)($36M)$52M($60M)($1M)($13M)$10M($5M)—Financing cash flowFin. cash
($4M)$13M$15M($3M)$54M($45M)($33M)($1M)$29M($26M)—Change in cashΔ cash
Balance sheet
$946M$1.0B$1.0B$1.1B$1.2B$1.3B$1.3B$1.3B$1.4B$1.5B$1.5BInvestments (total)Investments
$474M$531M$629M$650M$696M$785M$840M$865M$886M$876M—Float (underwriting basis)Float
$1.6B$1.7B$1.8B$1.9B$2.2B$2.3B$2.2B$2.3B$2.3B$2.4B$2.5BTotal assetsAssets
$1.2B$1.3B$1.4B$1.5B$1.6B$1.7B$1.8B$1.8B$1.8B$1.7B—Total liabilitiesTotal liab.
$439M$449M$399M$451M$518M$531M$484M$480M$546M$640M$666MShareholders’ equityEquity
III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Is it a good business?

  • Combined ratio ≈ 96%
    Roughly breakeven
    Total benefits, losses and expenses $880M ÷ premiums earned $921M
    Industry peers: median 96%
    What this means

    The heart of a property-casualty insurer: claims and costs as a share of premiums. Below 100% means it is paid to hold the float, the gold standard; above 100% means it loses money on the policies and must make it back on investments. Approximate here, taken from the filer's total benefits, losses and expenses over premiums, so it can sit a point or two off the company's headline figure; a number held below 100% across cycles is the mark of a disciplined underwriter, the rarest thing in the business.

  • Return on equity 12%
    Solid
    Net income $79M ÷ equity $640M
    Industry peers: median 11%
    What this means

    What it earns on shareholders' capital, the underwriting result plus what the float earns invested. Durably above the ~10% cost of equity is what compounds book value.

The float

  • Float $876M
    1.4× equity
    Net reserves + unearned premiums − prepaid reinsurance − receivables − DAC = $876M
    What this means

    Money held against future claims and invested in the meantime. Buffett's insight was that good underwriting makes this float cost less than nothing, a pool of other people's money the owners earn on. The larger it is against equity, the more that leverage works, for better or worse.

  • Investment income $53M
    6.0% on the float
    Net investment income $53M, 6.0% on the float
    What this means

    What the float and capital earned this year. This is the second engine: an insurer that breaks even on underwriting still wins if the float is large and invested well.

The cost and the reserves

  • Cost of float −4.6%
    Paid to hold the money
    Underwriting profit $41M ÷ two-year average float $881M
    What this means

    Buffett's own yardstick: the underwriting result as the price of holding the float, divided the way his tables divide it — over the two-year average of float where the record carries both years, since the year's result was earned on money that arrived through the year. At or below zero, policyholders are paying the company to invest their money — the gold standard. A modest positive cost can still beat borrowing; a chronic high cost means the float is expensive leverage.

  • Reserve development −$10M
    Past promises held
    Prior-year development, FY2025: favorable (reserves released) · record: 7 favorable, 3 unfavorable of 10
    In the filing’s words
    “Our insurance subsidiaries experienced favorable loss reserve development of approximately $10.3 million, or 1.1 percentage points of the loss ratio, during 2025 in their reserves for prior accident years, compared to approximately $15.0 million, or 1.6 percentage points of the loss ratio, during 2024.”
    ✓ the narrated $10.3 million ties the filed figure · the words are the company’s
    What this means

    Each year an insurer restates what its old accident years actually cost. Persistent favorable development means management reserved honestly and released the cushion; persistent unfavorable development means past profits were overstated by under-reserving — the industry's chronic sin, and the single most tell-tale line an owner can read. Signed as the company files it: negative favorable, positive unfavorable.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.

Fiscal yearChief executivePay, as filed“Actually paid”Net income
2021Kevin Burke$1.0M$1.0M$25M
2022Kevin Burke$1.2M$1.3M($2M)
2023Kevin Burke$914k$898k$4M
2024Kevin Burke$1.5M$1.5M$51M
2025Kevin Burke$1.7M$1.9M$79M

Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.

    Peers

    Donegal Group Inc. is listed here as a claim on a business rather than as the business itself — a preferred series, a bond or a warrant, filed under the same registrant as the common stock. A comparative table lines businesses up against one another, so there is none here. The business behind it is Donegal Group Inc. (DGICA), where the record, the scorecard and the peer bench are.

    IV

    The price

    What a price has to assume.

    What the price implies

    price / tangible book

    An insurer is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what Donegal Group Inc.’s record justifies.

    $
    The assumptions

    The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). An insurer earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for an insurer.

    Enter a price above to run it.

    Price / tangible book—
    Justified by the return—
    Normalized return on tangible equity6%
    Price / book—
    Earnings yield—
    P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)—
    Graham’s price gate—

    Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.

    Tangible book $660M on 37M shares, a 6% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the insurer keeps earning that return; an underwriting cycle, a reserve shortfall or a bad year on the float changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.

    Weigh DGICB against another business →

    The owners of DGICB: the meeting and the votes →

    Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Donegal Group Inc. (DGICB), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/DGICB, data as of 2026-08-17.

    Manual order: ← DGICA its page in the Manual DGII →

    Industry order: ← DGICA the Insurance — Property & Casualty chapter EG →