Insurance Hour

California's homeowners insurance market has been in crisis for years—and now, lawmakers may finally be taking decisive action.
A pair of new pro-consumer bills moving through the state legislature could reshape how the California FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, operates and pays its claims. Supporters say these changes could make the system more stable, more transparent, and better for both homeowners and the broader insurance market.

But not everyone agrees. Consumer advocates, regulators, and industry professionals are debating whether the proposed reforms truly fix the problem—or risk creating new ones.

Here's what's changing, why it matters, and what homeowners, agents, and insurers should watch closely.

The California FAIR Plan (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) was established in 1968 to ensure that all homeowners—especially those in high-risk fire zones—could get at least basic property coverage. It's not a government agency; rather, it's a syndicate made up of all private insurers licensed in the state. Every company participates and shares the FAIR Plan's financial exposure.

Originally, the FAIR Plan was meant to be temporary—a safety net for people who couldn't find coverage elsewhere. But after years of wildfires, inflation, and mounting claims, that safety net has become a primary option for hundreds of thousands of Californians.

As of 2023, FAIR Plan policies have more than doubled since 2018, surpassing 340,000 active policies statewide. For many homeowners, especially in wildfire-prone areas, it's now the only available coverage.

The problem? The FAIR Plan's financial stability hasn't kept pace with its growth.

According to reporting from KTVU's Tom Vacar, two bills—backed by both industry experts and consumer advocates—aim to strengthen the FAIR Plan's financial foundation and improve consumer access to private insurance alternatives.

The first bill would allow the FAIR Plan to:

• Borrow money or

• Issue catastrophe bonds—a financial tool commonly used by global insurers to manage large-scale disaster risk.

This means that in the event of major wildfires or catastrophic losses, the FAIR Plan would have access to capital markets to pay legitimate claims quickly and reliably, rather ...

California's homeowners are once again facing a harsh financial reality: State Farm, the state's largest home insurer, is asking for another round of major rate increases—just months after receiving emergency approval for a 17% hike.

This time, the company is seeking additional increases of 8.2% for homeowners, 25.8% for condo owners and renters, and a staggering 79.3% for landlords and rental properties.

The filing, now under review by the California Department of Insurance (CDI), highlights the ongoing financial strain that's pushing insurers to the brink. It also underscores a fundamental question: Can California's current regulatory framework—rooted in a 1980s-era system—keep up with the realities of 21st-century risk?

State Farm's latest request comes on the heels of devastating wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County and other regions earlier this year. Those fires destroyed thousands of structures and triggered billions in insured losses, with State Farm alone handling nearly 13,000 claims.

As insurance expert Karl Susman noted in a recent broadcast, this request doesn't come out of nowhere:

"State Farm's rates have always been drastically below market," Susman explained. "If you lined up every insurance company's rates, they were way down there. After all these fires and losses, it's finally caught up to them. They're trying to play catch-up to where the actual risk and premium should be."

The problem isn't isolated to one company. Over the past five years, California has seen a wave of insurer withdrawals, paused policy writing, and steep rate requests. Companies like Allstate, Farmers, and Mercury have all scaled back operations, while new business in wildfire-prone regions has virtually collapsed.

The state-run FAIR Plan, designed as a last-resort fire insurance option, has ballooned to over 340,000 policies—up from fewer than 125,000 just a few years ago.

Simply put, the math no longer works.

Insurers are paying out far more in claims than they're collecting in premiums, driven by three converging forces:

1. Catastrophic Losses: California's wildfire seasons are longer, more destructive, and more frequent than ever before. Insured losses have exceeded $30 billion in the past decade.

2. Inflation and Const ...

Six months after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, California is still grappling with the fallout — not just in rebuilding homes, but in rebuilding trust in its insurance system.

As new legislation, lawsuits, and regulatory actions unfold, what's becoming clear is that California's insurance market is undergoing a seismic shift, one that is redefining how insurers, regulators, and consumers coexist in a time of climate-fueled risk.

In a recent Inside the Issues episode, host Amrit Singh unpacked the crisis with insurance expert Karl Susman, whose candid analysis of the industry's failures and forthcoming reforms shed light on both the problems and the potential path forward.

At the center of California's insurance meltdown is State Farm, the state's largest property insurer.

After years of warning about wildfire losses and rising reinsurance costs, State Farm shocked policyholders in 2024 when it announced massive non-renewals and subsequently requested emergency rate hikes — approved by the state in May.

"It's just basically all new material," said homeowner Sean Brower, referring to the $40,000 fire-resistant roof he installed at his insurer's urging. Yet, despite these costly mitigation efforts, he was dropped a few months later.

Brower's experience mirrors that of thousands of Californians who invested heavily in fire hardening, only to face non-renewals anyway.

"We've been a customer since 2020," Brower said. "And I just got apologies and, you know, 'Sorry.'"

In a compromise brokered with regulators, State Farm agreed not to drop additional customers for the remainder of the year in exchange for a rate increase tied to wildfire claims payouts — totaling over $4.2 billion as of June.

Still, the California Department of Insurance (CDI) has opened an investigation into State Farm's claims-handling practices following numerous consumer complaints.

"The market conduct exams do look into how companies have handled their claims," said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. "The problem is they often take a long time — years, sometimes."

For now, State Farm insists it's cooperating fully and that "thousands of customers are being helped by our teams on the ground." But the reputational damage — and public frustration — remains.

I ...

California's insurance market, once one of the most competitive and innovative in the country, is now in crisis. Homeowners are struggling to find coverage, major carriers are pausing or canceling policies, and regulators are scrambling to patch a system that many experts say has stopped working altogether.

At the heart of the debate lies a single, decades-old law: Proposition 103, the 1988 voter initiative that transformed California's insurance landscape. The law, which promised lower premiums and stronger consumer protections, now stands accused of creating a regulatory bottleneck that has driven insurers out of the state and left millions exposed.

At a recent policy forum hosted by the Independent Institute, the Washington International Insurance Agents Association (WIAA), and the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), a panel of industry experts — Karl Susman, Christian Fores, Lars Powell, and Sam Sorich — tackled the question head-on: Is Proposition 103 to blame for California's insurance collapse?

Their collective answer was clear: the crisis didn't happen overnight, but Prop 103's outdated framework has turned what should have been a market correction into a full-blown breakdown.

When voters approved Proposition 103 in 1988, California's auto insurance rates were soaring, and public trust in insurers was low. The initiative — authored by consumer advocate Harvey Rosenfield — promised reform by:

• Requiring the California Department of Insurance (CDI) to approve all rate changes before they took effect,

• Allowing public "interveners" to challenge rate filings,

• Making the Insurance Commissioner an elected position, and

• Mandating an initial 20% rate rollback across multiple lines of insurance.

The idea was to protect consumers from excessive premiums and ensure transparency. For a time, it worked — at least on paper. But as the industry evolved and risk models became more complex, Prop 103's rigid approval process turned into a regulatory bottleneck that many experts now view as the single largest obstacle to a functioning insurance market.

As Christian Fores, President of the WIAA, explained, Prop 103's well-intentioned structure has become paralyzing in practice.

In 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103, a sweeping ballot initiative intended to make insurance more affordable and transparent. At the time, it sounded like a consumer victory — a 20% rollback in auto insurance rates and stronger oversight of insurers. But 36 years later, the law has become the centerpiece of a growing crisis that's left homeowners scrambling for coverage, major insurers fleeing the state, and policymakers wondering how to undo decades of regulatory gridlock.

In a recent policy presentation, Kristian Fors, research fellow at the Independent Institute, outlined how Proposition 103 has "wrecked an entire industry." His detailed breakdown helps explain why insurers are leaving California — and what must change if the market is to recover.

Proposition 103 was introduced with good intentions. It aimed to protect Californians from arbitrary rate hikes by requiring insurance companies to obtain state approval before increasing premiums. It also created new consumer intervention rights, allowing advocacy groups to challenge rate filings and even receive reimbursement for legal costs if successful.

But Fors argues that these mechanisms, while designed for accountability, have morphed into structural barriers that paralyze the market.

Under the law:

• Any rate increase over 6.9% automatically triggers a public hearing — a process so lengthy and costly that insurers often avoid filing for larger, necessary adjustments.

• Even smaller filings face months-long delays, with approval times averaging 160 days for non-contested filings and 337 days for contested ones.

• Insurers cannot submit new filings while one is still pending, meaning that in inflationary environments, their rates quickly become obsolete.

The result: California insurers are legally capped at raising rates slower than real-world costs rise.

"When companies are forced to wait months just to raise rates by 6.9%, they fall hopelessly behind inflation, wildfire risk, and construction costs," Fors said. "Over time, the difference between reality and regulation becomes impossible to close."

The evidence Fors presented is stark:

• Between 2012 and 2021, California's average underwriting profit was – ...

Why a 37-Year-Old Law Is Failing Homeowners, Consumers, and the Insurance Market

When California voters approved Proposition 103 in 1988, it was billed as a consumer victory—a promise to make insurance fair, affordable, and available for everyone. Nearly four decades later, however, many experts argue that Prop 103 has done the opposite.

In a recent presentation, Sam Sorich, former president of the Association of California Insurance Companies, delivered a stark assessment of the law's unintended consequences. He described how the 1988 reform—once hailed as a model of consumer protection—has instead shackled the state's insurance system with bureaucracy, inefficiency, and political paralysis.

Sorich labeled the key culprits the "Four Horsemen of the California Insurance Apocalypse." These four provisions of Prop 103, he argues, have crippled the marketplace, driven insurers out of the state, and left consumers paying more for less coverage.

To understand why Prop 103 matters so much today, it's worth revisiting the political and economic climate of 1988.

California voters were angry. A new state law required drivers to carry proof of insurance, but premiums were soaring—fueled by expanding lawsuits and skyrocketing auto claims. During that election year, no fewer than five ballot initiatives promised to fix the "auto insurance crisis."

Voters, overwhelmed by 29 statewide propositions, latched onto one that seemed straightforward. Proposition 103, authored by consumer advocate Harvey Rosenfield, promised sweeping reforms: a 20% rate rollback, a competitive marketplace, and guaranteed affordability for all.

It narrowly passed with 51% of the vote, though it only won a majority in six counties. Few voters, Sorich noted, had actually read the 10 pages of dense text buried in a 160-page voter pamphlet. What they didn't realize was that the initiative didn't just regulate auto insurance—it extended to nearly all property and casualty lines, including homeowners and commercial coverage.

Section Two of Proposition 103 laid out its lofty purpose: to encourage competition, ensure fairness, and maintain affordability and availability of insurance for Californians.

But according to Sorich—and other experts like Karl Susman, Lars Carlson, and Christian Rusch—those goals have not been met.

• Competition has collapsed. Insurers have restricted their operations or left the state entirely.

For decades, California's insurance market has been a battleground — not between insurers and consumers, but between economics and regulation. While natural disasters and inflation often take the blame for the state's spiraling premiums and insurer exodus, insurance expert Lars Powell argues that the real culprit is deeper, systemic, and self-inflicted.

In his presentation, "California's Insurance Crisis: A Case Study in Regulatory Failure," Powell lays out a data-driven critique of Proposition 103, the 1988 voter-approved law that governs how insurers set rates in California. His verdict? Prop 103 is a well-intentioned but disastrously outdated system that has effectively crippled California's ability to maintain a healthy insurance market.

Powell, who directs the Center for Risk and Insurance Research at the University of Alabama, has spent nearly three decades studying risk systems across the United States. His goal is straightforward: to identify how insurance markets work — and why they fail.

When asked to analyze California's system, Powell and his research team did what academics do best: they ran the numbers.

"We were approached by folks who wanted us to write a critique of Prop 103 that used data and math — not politics or emotion — to see what's really happening," he explained.

Their findings, later published in the University of Connecticut Insurance Law Journal, offer a sobering view of the state's regulatory structure — one that has effectively inverted the purpose of insurance regulation, from ensuring solvency and competition to suppressing prices and delaying reform.

Contrary to popular belief, Powell doesn't blame wildfires or climate change for California's insurance crisis.

"These aren't insurance problems per se," he said. "Insurance is just where you feel the pain."

He compared California's current situation to what happened in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana after Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina — when insurers suddenly realized they had been underpricing risk for decades.

But there's a key difference. While the Gulf states adapted, recalibrating rates and rebuilding solvency, California refused to modernize its system.

"California's problem," Powell said, "is that insurance doesn't let the insurance mechanism work here."

The result? A 35-year-old regulatory model built for the analog age trying to manage a digital, data-driven industry.< ...

California is burning—literally and figuratively.

In recent years, wildfires have destroyed entire communities, displaced hundreds of thousands of residents, and cost billions in insured losses. Yet amid the physical devastation, another crisis is quietly raging: the collapse of California's homeowners insurance market.

According to insurance expert Karl Susman, who's spent three decades helping clients recover from disasters, the problem goes beyond climate change and wildfires. The true culprit, he argues, is California's outdated insurance regulation—specifically Proposition 103.

What was once hailed as a consumer protection law has become, in Susman's words, "a fax-era regulation strangling a digital-age market." And the consequences are now being felt by homeowners, renters, investors, and even drivers across the state.

Before diving into policy, Susman starts with people.

In one of California's recent megafires, more than 30 people lost their lives. Over 180,000 residents were forced to evacuate. More than 18,000 structures were destroyed. And perhaps most shocking of all: 1 in 10 homes had no insurance at all.

"We hear about acres burned and structures lost," Susman says, "but what about the people? The families who had to leave with nothing, whose insurance—or lack of it—determines whether they can rebuild?"

His own agency had 141 clients who lost their homes completely and another 50 with partial losses, many still navigating smoke damage claims months later.

These statistics underscore what the insurance system is supposed to do: help people recover. But that system, he warns, is breaking down—because insurers can no longer operate under rules written nearly 40 years ago.

As an insurance broker, Susman describes his job as finding the best coverage at the right price from a "bookshelf" of carriers. But that shelf, once full, is now nearly empty.

"Ten years ago, we had 20 or 30 companies we could go to," he says. "Now? We're down to almost none."

Seven of California's twelve largest insurers—including some of the most recognizable national brands—have either paused new policies or begun mass non-renewals of existing ones.

That means fewer options, higher prices, and lower coverage. Homeowners who once had dozens of choices now face the same grim decision: pay thousands more through the California FAIR Plan—or go uninsured.

"It's not hyperbole t ...

In a landmark decision with statewide implications, a California judge has ruled that the California FAIR Plan Association violated state insurance law in how it handled smoke damage claims from the January wildfires.

For thousands of homeowners caught in disputes over denied or underpaid claims, this ruling represents more than a legal technicality — it's a long-awaited validation that the FAIR Plan must play by the same rules as every other insurer.

Insurance expert Karl Susman, who has followed the issue closely and assisted many affected homeowners, called the decision "a huge win for fire survivors and for fairness in the marketplace."

"Now they don't just have the Department of Insurance behind them," Susman said. "They have the power of the law. Anyone with a smoke damage claim — new, old, open, or pending — should reach out to the FAIR Plan again and have them reevaluate based on this ruling."

The California FAIR Plan isn't a traditional insurance company. It's a state-mandated, privately managed insurance pool created in 1968 to ensure that homeowners in high-risk areas — particularly those vulnerable to wildfire — could still obtain basic fire insurance coverage when traditional insurers refuse to write policies.

In recent years, as wildfire risk and reinsurance costs have soared, the FAIR Plan has ballooned from a niche safety net into a last resort for hundreds of thousands of Californians who can no longer find coverage in the standard market.

But unlike private insurers, the FAIR Plan offers limited coverage — fire and smoke damage, primarily — and its claims-handling practices have increasingly come under scrutiny.

This latest court ruling directly challenges one of its most controversial practices.

The case centered on how the FAIR Plan interpreted smoke damage in property claims following the Eaton and Palisades wildfires.

Homeowners complained that the FAIR Plan denied or underpaid claims unless the smoke damage could be proven to have caused a permanent, physical, and visible change to their property — and that change had to be detectable without laboratory testing.

That standard, the judge ruled, is not what California law requires.

By imposing those restrictions, the FAIR Plan effectively provided less coverage than m ...

California's insurance crisis has officially reached the living rooms of everyday homeowners. With coverage costs climbing, non-renewals spreading, and confusion growing, consumers are now asking the same urgent question: What do I really need in my homeowners policy — and how can I make sure I'm protected without overpaying?

In a recent CBS News Los Angeles panel hosted by consumer reporter Christine Lazar, a team of leading insurance experts — Karl Susman, Amy Bach, and Janet Ruiz — tackled those questions head-on. The discussion revealed not just why coverage is becoming more expensive, but also how everyday Californians can take smarter, more proactive steps to protect their homes and finances.

The panel opened with a powerful reality check: any home can burn.

"Fire insurance is definitely one you want to be sure you have," Susman explained. "No matter where you are in California. We talk to people who say, 'I'm not in the hills, there's no fire.' The house can burn. Believe me."

While wildfires dominate the headlines, Susman emphasized that everyday structure fires remain the number-one cause of loss in California. Fire coverage, he said, should never be optional — even for urban homeowners who think they're "safe."

But fire isn't the only peril to worry about. Depending on location, flood coverage may also be necessary — and this is where many Californians are caught off guard.

"Homeowners' policies can cover water damage," Susman said, "but they will not cover flood damage. That's a totally different policy, available through FEMA or an independent company."

This distinction — between water damage from inside the home and flooding from outside — is one of the most misunderstood aspects of property insurance, and it's costing Californians millions in uncovered losses each year.

As costs rise, some homeowners are responding by trimming coverage — often in the wrong places.

Susman warned that reducing or eliminating key coverage areas can leave people dangerously underinsured.

"If you're trying to save money, you can lower things like 'other structures' — that covers detached buildings like garages or pools — or reduce personal property coverage if you know you don't have as much to insure. But don't touch your core coverage. That's what protects your home itself."

This approach, he says, helps balance affordability without jeopardizing essential protection. But too often, consumers make cuts without understanding wha ...