Insurance Hour

For thousands of Florida residents, home insurance is no longer a safeguard—it's a financial burden threatening their way of life. Nowhere is this more evident than in coastal condominium communities like Daytona Beach Shores, where property insurance premiums have skyrocketed by as much as 500% in a single year.

A recent FOX 35 News report captured the personal toll behind these numbers, featuring residents whose retirement dreams are now in jeopardy. The situation illustrates not only the fragility of Florida's insurance market but also the cascading effects of climate risk, reinsurance costs, and dwindling competition.

In this analysis, we'll explore what's driving these unprecedented increases, what it means for condo owners and associations, and how the industry might stabilize in the years ahead.

Patty Blaze, a retiree living in the Marbella Condominium on Daytona Beach Shores, represents a growing number of Floridians trapped between rising costs and limited options.

"I had budgeted for my monthly expenses to be a certain amount," she told FOX 35. "I've got enough reserves to maybe ride out another season of this insurance, but otherwise I might have to sell the place."

Blaze's condo association saw its insurance bill jump from $40,000 to over $260,000 in a single year — a 500% increase. Her personal share of that cost now translates to $1,100 a month, roughly a third of her total living expenses.

For her and many others, that kind of expense is unsustainable. Some owners are considering selling their units, while others are seeking part-time work to cover the difference.

"This isn't just an inconvenience," one board member said. "It's a financial crisis."

According to insurance expert Karl Susman, who spoke to FOX 35, "A 500% rate increase is completely out of sorts — and it's completely unsustainable."

But to understand how this happened, we need to look at the key factors fueling Florida's property insurance crisis:

The 2022 and 2023 hurricane seasons left deep financial scars across the state. Major storms caused billions in insured losses, straining both local and global insurance markets. Even properties that avoided direct damage were affected because the cost of reinsurance—insurance that carriers purchase to protect themselves from catastrophic losses—rose sharply.

Many national carriers, including State Farm and Farmers, have scaled back or withdrawn from Florida's market altogether. This has left only a handful of companies willing to write coastal property cover ...

If you've noticed your car insurance bill climbing lately, you're not alone. Across California, millions of drivers are being hit with higher premiums — sometimes by hundreds of dollars per year. For many households, the increases come on top of other rising costs like fuel, groceries, and rent, making driving more expensive than ever before.

In a recent ABC10 (KXTV) segment, insurance expert Karl Susman, president of the Susman Insurance Agency, broke down why car insurance costs are surging and what drivers can do to minimize the impact. His insights reveal a combination of technology, economics, and post-pandemic market correction that's reshaping the auto insurance landscape statewide.

California is home to more than 27 million licensed drivers, and nearly all of them are feeling the pressure. "It's ridiculous," one Sacramento driver told ABC10. "They're going up like crazy."

Another driver added: "I bought a new vehicle, compared it with a couple of family members and friends, and it's much different than years ago."

These stories echo a broader trend across the state and the nation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, auto insurance costs rose more than 20% nationwide in 2023—one of the steepest jumps in decades. And California, long known for its consumer-friendly but tightly regulated insurance market, is now seeing those delayed increases catch up all at once.

Susman explained that today's higher prices aren't arbitrary — they're the result of three key forces: technology, inflation, and a regulatory "boomerang effect."

"Every accident costs thousands of dollars," Susman said. "Where there used to be smaller claims, now even a fender bender can turn into a major expense."

Modern vehicles are equipped with a suite of high-tech features — from parking sensors and adaptive cruise control to rear cameras and LiDAR systems — that make even minor repairs costly.

"Ten or fifteen years ago, if you damaged your bumper, a body shop could knock it out, rebuff it, and you'd be fine," Susman explained. "Now, that same bumper has cameras and sensors built in. You can't just have anyone install it — it requires specialized parts and technicians."

That complexity means higher repair costs, longer repair times, and more expensive claims for insurers. Add ongoing global supply chain shortages for parts, and the financial strain compounds even further.

During the height of COVID-19, th ...

In California, the growing intensity and frequency of wildfires have pushed the state's homeowners insurance market to the brink. Entire regions—especially those nestled in canyons, hillsides, and wooded communities—are now considered "high-risk" zones. For homeowners in these areas, finding affordable and reliable insurance coverage has become nearly impossible.

In September 2023, the California Department of Insurance, under Commissioner Ricardo Lara, announced a new agreement with major insurance carriers aimed at reversing this trend. The move followed a series of high-profile withdrawals by insurers, including State Farm and Allstate, who had stopped writing new homeowner policies in many wildfire-prone areas. The result was a coverage crisis that left thousands of homeowners scrambling for protection in a market on the verge of collapse.

This development, while welcome by many, raises fundamental questions: What caused the crisis in the first place? What does this new deal mean for homeowners? And how will it reshape the future of property insurance in California?

For years, California has been caught between two opposing forces: the increasing risk of natural disasters and a rigid regulatory framework designed to keep insurance rates low.

The rise in wildfire frequency and severity—fueled by drought, rising temperatures, and changing wind patterns—has driven insured losses into the billions. Insurers, unable to raise rates quickly enough to cover these escalating risks, began scaling back their exposure in high-risk areas.

The result was a growing exodus. By mid-2023, major insurers had stopped accepting new homeowners in entire counties, citing "unsustainable risk." The impact on homeowners was severe: premiums doubled or tripled, and for many, coverage disappeared altogether.

One homeowner interviewed by CBS, living in Burbank's Brace Canyon, shared that her premium nearly doubled in just a few years—from under $5,000 to almost $10,000 annually. "I even tried to get new insurance up here," she said, "but they just look at where I live and say, 'Sorry, Charlie.'"

Her story reflects the reality for thousands of Californians who are being priced out of insurance, not because of negligence or poor maintenance, but simply because of geography.

To understand why insurers are leaving, it's essential to revisit the law at the center of the debate: Proposition 103. Passed in 1988, the measure was originally designed to protect consumers by regulating insurance rates and requiring prior approval from the Department of Insurance before rate changes could take effect.

The law also prohibited the use of forward-looking risk models—forcing insurers to rely only on historical data to justify rate increases. While this made sense in an era of stable weather patterns, it's increasingly out of step with the volatility of modern climate change.

As insurance broker Karl Susman explained in the KCAL report, "We are in a different world than we were in the '80s. There's better computer modeling, and we have a different weather s ...

Buying a home in California has never been easy — soaring prices, competitive markets, and tight lending conditions make the process daunting enough. But for many homeowners today, a new obstacle has emerged that even the best budgeting can't overcome: finding insurance.

In January 2024, NBC4's I-Team investigated this growing crisis, uncovering how homeowners are being dropped by long-time insurers, forced onto the state's FAIR Plan, and left to navigate an increasingly confusing and costly insurance landscape. The report highlighted a critical shift: the FAIR Plan, originally designed as a last-resort program, is fast becoming the only resort for thousands of Californians.

This post breaks down what's happening, what the recent court ruling could mean for FAIR Plan coverage, and how homeowners can adapt in an unpredictable market.

Few stories capture the emotional toll of California's insurance crisis better than that of Allison Rosenberg, a homeowner in Marina del Rey.

After years with the same insurance company, Rosenberg received an unexpected email: her policy would not be renewed. The reason? Three claims in ten years — not an unusual record, but enough for her carrier to label her as too risky.

"I hit the wall pretty quickly," she told NBC's Lolita Lopez, after contacting multiple insurers without success. "It seems like you thought it would be easier… but it's not."

Her only option now: the California FAIR Plan, a state-mandated insurance pool designed to provide basic fire coverage when no private insurer will.

Created in the late 1960s after widespread urban fires, the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan operates as California's insurer of last resort. All insurers licensed in the state are required to participate in the pool, collectively sharing the risk of homeowners who can't obtain private coverage.

Historically, the FAIR Plan covered only a small fraction of California homes. But in recent years, that number has exploded. According to NBC4's I-Team, the FAIR Plan's total active policies have more than doubled since 2018, rising to over 341,000 as of late 2023.

"It's a mess," said Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer group United Policyholders. "It's not the way it should be, and we're trying to fix it — but it's tough."

Bach noted that approximately 40% of FAIR Plan policyholders now rely solely on ...

As Southern California braces for another dangerous fire season, thousands of homeowners are facing a different kind of emergency — one that doesn't involve flames, but finance.

According to a recent CBS KCBS report, insurers are dropping policyholders across the region, even in areas not currently classified as high fire zones. For many, premiums have doubled — and for others, coverage has vanished altogether.

It's a story that's becoming all too familiar in California: homeowners blindsided by non-renewal notices, forced into expensive last-resort insurance options, and caught in the middle of a volatile market where insurers are struggling to manage mounting risk.

For Heather Bracca, who lives in an unincorporated part of Chatsworth, the shock came not in the form of smoke but in paperwork.

"We actually didn't find out we were getting non-renewed until we tried to refinance," she told CBS. "They needed a copy of our renewal policy because it was almost up."

By then, her insurer had quietly decided not to renew her policy. Bracca scrambled to find a replacement, but every new quote she received was more than double her previous premium — which had already climbed to nearly $5,000 a year.

"It just seems unfair," she said. "You don't have any claims, you don't make them pay anything out, and they can still just take your money and drop you."

Bracca's experience reflects what many Southern Californians are discovering: the problem isn't just the wildfires themselves, but the insurance market's response to perceived wildfire exposure — even in neighborhoods that haven't burned in decades.

After exhausting every private option, Bracca ended up on the California FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort for residents who can't find coverage elsewhere.

The FAIR Plan is a state-mandated pool of insurers that collectively provides basic fire insurance when private carriers won't. But while it serves an essential safety function, it has serious limitations.

"The maximum limitation is that they will only cover up to $3 million in total value for each property," CBS reported.

That cap might sound generous, but in high-cost regions like Southern California — where home values regularly exceed $1 million and rebuilding costs are soaring — the FAIR Plan's coverage often falls short of full protection.

California's long-running insurance crisis took a dramatic turn in Sacramento this summer — and not the one many expected.

After weeks of tense debate, lawmakers failed to pass any major insurance reform bills before the legislative deadline, leaving both consumer advocates and the insurance industry frustrated.

The battle centered around a controversial proposal that critics said would have quietly given insurers broad new powers to raise rates and shift costs to consumers — a move described by watchdogs as a "backroom bailout."

As ABC 7's Michael Finney reported in his Seven on Your Side segment, "It was a wild ride. Consumer advocates were saying the insurance industry was working on a secret backroom deal to get a major bailout — and force consumers to pay for it."

Now, with the legislative window closed, the status quo remains — and that means continued instability for homeowners struggling to find coverage.

For weeks, rumors swirled around the Capitol that the insurance industry was quietly negotiating with state lawmakers to push through emergency legislation designed to speed up rate approvals and ease financial pressures on insurers.

Consumer groups warned that the proposal would:

• Allow rate hikes without public disclosure of financial data,

• Shift high-risk insurance costs from companies to consumers, and

• Let insurers charge customers for what are currently considered business expenses.

"This is no way to run a country. This is no way for the state of California to conduct its business," said Robert Herrell of the Consumer Federation of California, speaking to ABC 7.

Consumer advocates, including Consumer Watchdog's Jamie Court, accused the industry of trying to sneak a reform package through the legislature without public hearings or debate.

"They may not have consummated the deal," Court said, "but they were clearly talking about a legislative plan. I think the sunshine was the best disinfectant here, and it kept this deal from happening."

When the final legislative deadline passed, it became clear: no deal had been made, and no major reform bill would move forward this session.

"Important legislative deadlines have just passed," Finney said. "So now we know what's ...

Florida is once again at the center of a property insurance crisis. But this time, the story isn't just about insurers leaving the state — it's about homeowners leaving insurance altogether.

In a recent FOX 35 Orlando segment, reporter Amy Caulfield revealed that a growing number of Floridians are choosing to drop their home insurance entirely because they simply can't afford it anymore.
As one resident said, "It went up massively in one year."

That decision — born of financial pressure — has raised alarms among regulators and insurance experts, who warn that the short-term savings could come at devastating long-term costs.

Owning a home in Florida has always carried certain risks. Hurricanes, floods, sinkholes, and rising sea levels all make property insurance both essential and expensive.

But in 2024, the cost has reached a tipping point.

According to data cited by FOX 35, Florida now leads the nation in homeowners dropping insurance coverage. Between 15% and 20% of Florida homeowners are now uninsured — well above the national average of 12%.

The reason? Price.

Florida's average homeowners insurance premium has climbed to around $6,000 per year, a 42% increase from 2022. That makes it the highest in the nation — and for many, unsustainable.

"The question for some homeowners isn't 'What policy should I get?'" Caulfield said. "It's 'Should I get insurance at all?'"

When middle-class families are forced to choose between insurance and other basic costs, the financial logic can feel inescapable. But experts warn that it's also a sign of a broken system.

To understand why Floridians are dropping coverage, you first have to understand why premiums have doubled in just a few years.

Florida faces more severe weather events than any other U.S. state — from hurricanes to inland flooding. Insurers price those risks into their models, and as catastrophic events grow more frequent and costly, so do premiums.

Insurers must buy reinsurance — insurance for insurance companies — to cover their own catastrophic losses. Global reinsurance costs have doubled or tripled since 2020, largely due to climate-driven disasters worldwide.

When reinsurers raise their prices, those costs get passed directly to consumers.

California's homeowners insurance market has been in turmoil for years — and the pressure is only increasing. As wildfires grow more destructive and insurers retreat from high-risk regions, many property owners have turned to the California FAIR Plan, the state's "insurer of last resort." But with growing enrollment and new technology reshaping how wildfire risk is assessed, even the FAIR Plan is undergoing major changes.

In October 2023, FOX KTVU reported on new developments involving AI-powered wildfire scoring, state-approved rate increases, and negotiations designed to bring private insurers back to California. The interview featured Karl Susman of Susman Insurance Agency, who provided deep insight into what these changes mean for consumers.

This article breaks down what's happening, why it matters, and how homeowners can prepare for a new era of data-driven insurance in California.

California's home insurance landscape has been under severe stress since 2018, when the state experienced back-to-back catastrophic wildfires that wiped out entire communities. As claims piled up, major insurers like State Farm and Allstate began refusing to write new homeowner policies in many regions. Some even stopped renewing existing ones.

The reasons were twofold:

1. Rising wildfire losses made entire zip codes unprofitable.

2. Regulatory limits under Proposition 103 prevented insurers from quickly adjusting rates to match increasing risk.

As a result, tens of thousands of Californians were forced onto the FAIR Plan—a state-managed insurance pool meant as a safety net for those unable to obtain private coverage.

The FAIR Plan was designed to be temporary coverage of last resort, not a long-term solution for a large portion of the state's population. Yet today, it has become a primary insurer for growing numbers of homeowners in fire-prone regions. And now, even this fallback system is facing strain.

In 2023, the FAIR Plan introduced a new wildfire risk scoring system built on artificial intelligence technology called ZestyAI — or, as insiders refer to it, the "Z-Fire Score."

According to Susman, this is "a lot more granular" than the older, zip-code-based model. Instead of assigning a general fire risk to a neighborhood or region, the AI system evaluates individual properties based on dozens of unique factors.

"It's not zip code. It's not territory," Sus ...

California's insurance market has been under stress for years, but in 2024, it reached a breaking point. Homeowners in high-risk regions have seen non-renewals, rate hikes, and long wait times for policies — a crisis that's left regulators, insurers, and consumers caught in a storm of competing priorities.

In a recent FOX KTVU report, veteran journalist Tom Vacar explored what many are calling a "fire insurance drought." The story revealed a deep divide between insurers demanding modernization and consumer advocates warning of deregulation.

At the center of it all sits Proposition 103, the 1988 voter-approved law that controls how insurers set rates — and whether they can raise them at all.

Under Proposition 103, insurers must justify any rate increase to the California Department of Insurance (CDI) through an exhaustive public review. Rates are based primarily on historical loss data — how much insurers have paid out in the past — rather than predictive modeling of future risks.

That worked decades ago, when wildfire patterns were relatively stable. But as Vacar explained, "a rash of unforeseen wildfires, climate change, and far higher replacement costs" have broken that model.

Today, insurance carriers say they can't price risk accurately using the tools Proposition 103 allows.

"All of the models they had been using to come up with those figures are basically not working anymore," the segment reported.

Insurers now want permission to use forward-looking catastrophe models — similar to those used for hurricanes and floods in other states — to project future losses.

But opponents say that change could give insurers too much control, allowing them to set rates with proprietary algorithms that regulators — and consumers — can't easily challenge.

Independent broker Karl Susman, who represents both consumers and insurance carriers, offered a grounded perspective in the report.

"What I try and explain to people whenever I have this conversation," Susman said, "is that this really isn't politics. This is really just math."

Susman's point reflects a growing frustration within the insurance community: carriers simply can't absorb the rising cost of claims while premiums remain frozen.

• Construction inflation has driven rebuilding costs up more than 30% in five years.

Californians are facing another kind of sticker shock — this time, not at the car lot, but in their insurance bills. Across the state and the nation, auto insurance premiums are climbing sharply, with some drivers seeing increases of 20%, 30%, or even 40%.

Industry experts, including Los Angeles–based insurance broker Karl Susman, say this surge is not driven by greed or regulatory neglect, but by a perfect storm of market forces: skyrocketing vehicle prices, supply-chain constraints, labor shortages, and a return to pre-pandemic driving patterns.

In short, the cost of owning and insuring a car has entered a new economic era — one that challenges both insurers and consumers to rethink what "risk" really means on the road.

The story of today's auto insurance spike begins not in 2024, but back in 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Californians drove less. Fewer miles meant fewer accidents, and in response, many insurers issued rebates and temporary rate reductions.

For a brief period, premiums flattened or even dropped. But as restrictions lifted and people returned to their daily commutes, claim volumes shot back up. At the same time, a parallel crisis was unfolding in the auto industry itself — one that would soon ripple through every corner of the insurance world.

The global supply chain disruption that began during the pandemic caused an unprecedented surge in vehicle prices. Semiconductor shortages, factory shutdowns, and shipping delays meant that both new and used cars became scarce commodities.

According to the CBS–KCAL report:

"Used car prices are up over 26%, and new car prices are up nearly 10%. If you have a car accident, and you need a replacement vehicle, the insurance company now has to spend all this extra money to get you another car."

That single dynamic — inflated vehicle values — has transformed the economics of auto claims.

Auto insurance is, at its core, about replacement cost. If the cost to replace or repair a vehicle rises, so does the cost of the claim — and eventually, the premium.

Even routine accidents now cost insurers substantially more to resolve. A minor fender-bender that might have cost $2,000 in 2019 could easily exceed $3,000 or $4,000 today once you account for inflation in parts, labor, and diagnostic technology.

Modern vehicles, loaded with sensors, cameras, and electronics, are more expensive to fix than ever. A cracked bumper may now require recalibration of collision-avoidance systems or lane-departure cameras.

Add in longer repair timelines due to backlogged parts and fewer qualified technicians, and insurers are facing delays and hi ...