Wildfires, unrelenting storms and the ballooning costs of rebuilding weather-damaged property are straining the nation’s property insurers, forcing customers to confront dwindling options and higher premiums.
The State Farm General Insurance Company recently stopped accepting new applications for business and personal lines of property and casualty insurance in California. Allstate quit writing new policies in the wildfire-prone state last year.
Those factors are “converging to put upward pressure on property-casualty insurance premium rates across the United States. Florida, Louisiana, and, most recently, California, have been directly impacted,” said Janet Ruiz, a California spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute. “Three hurricanes — Fiona, Ian, and Nicole — made landfall and did damage across half a dozen states,” he said after a briefing on summer hazards. “This year alone, wildfires have destroyed an area almost as big as the state of Maryland.”
State Farm acknowledged Sacramento’s efforts to mitigate the risks from wildfires and said it would work constructively with state officials to “help build market capacity in California.” Some are not writing new policies while others are non-renewing high-risk properties and generally reducing their business in California. Allstate stopped issuing new policies in the state last year.
The situation is putting a burden on the FAIR Plan, an option that offers barebones coverage at high rates, with enrollment surging 70% since 2019, to 272,846 homes in 2022, according to the Los Angeles Times. The paper reported that real estate deals in the San Francisco area are falling through because some people cannot get insurance.
In Florida, the state legislature met in a special session last year and passed two bills, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis — who is now a presidential candidate — to stabilize an insurance market that had been spiraling out of control because of roof-replacement insurance scams and repeated hurricanes.
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