- “This Changes Everything”
- UP testimony to CA State Senate Insurance Committee on catastrophic risk and insurance
- UP Tip of the Month: Water Damage, Extreme Weather, and Shrinking Coverage
- UP comments to Federal Insurance Office on Natural Catastrophes and Insurance
- UP: A watered down NAIC climate change survey; but CA Dept. stands firm on original format
- UP on Green Rebuilding – Sustainable Silicon Valley Annual Meeting
- Insurance Increasingly Unaffordable as Climate Change Brings More Disasters
Climate change – an insurance wild card…
Insurance companies are highly sophisticated gamblers. Gamblers will take risks in return for money, but only to a degree. They like predictable risks. The unpredictable, scary and costly aspects of climate change are a challenge for all of us, especially for insurance consumers. In anticipation of the extreme weather events, drought and rising sea levels associated with climate change, insurance companies are reducing what they cover, increasing premiums, dropping long time customers and pulling out of entire regions in order to protect their profits and shareholders. Because of this, insurance consumers need United Policyholders’ help more than ever. We’re providing that help through our Roadmap to Preparedness work, including our Wildfire Risk Reduction and Asset Protection Project, and advocacy activities at national, state and local levels. In our roles with the Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, we are engaging with industry leaders and lawmakers to increase mitigation incentives and insurance rewards to property owners. Through our Restoring Insurance Safety nets Coalition initiative we are working to reverse the protection gaps that are leaving disaster victims short on funds for repairs and rebuilding and increasing dependency on government aid and charitable resources.
United Policyholders is helping through advocacy and the Roadmap to Preparedness
UP has been doing advocacy work at the intersection of climate change, extreme weather events and insurance since 2007. At that time, with support from the Rockefeller Family Fund, we helped launch the first Climate Risk Disclosure Survey so that regulators could monitor insurer research and actions related to climate change and help consumers adapt. A grant from FEMA/the Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient Cities program significantly boosted the Roadmap to Preparedness program through which we’re creating tools and resources to help people understand and contend with a changing property insurance marketplace.
In response to climate change data, “admitted” insurance companies are reducing their market share in brush areas by dropping long time customers, leaving entire regions and imposing steep brush surcharges. While some are finding coverage through admitted competitors, many are having to turn to non admitted” (surplus lines) insurers. Policies sold by non-admitted insurance companies are not scrutinzed by state insurance regulators, nor are they backed by insolvency protection funds. A 2017 RAND Corporation study shows a dramatic increase in the market share of non admitted home insurance companies in California.
Many insurers are transferring risk back onto property owners through higher deductibles and new exclusions that drastically reduce coverage for water and other forms of property damage. Property owners are having to be more proactive in shopping for insurance and taking steps to reduce risk in order to qualify for coverage. UP is doing what we can to help people maintain insurance on their homes and businesses and support mitigation efforts across the nation.
Insurance industry reactions to climate change has left an increasing number of people and businesses between a rock and a hard place: They can’t afford to pay for the increased cost of the policy their lender requires them to maintain, they can’t sell their property because of the new, high insurance price tag, and their job requires them to stay where they are. So UP is working with partners in coastal areas to help long-time low and moderate income residents and small businesses whose lender-required policies have become unaffordable and/or too bare-bones to provide adequate protection.
We are also assisting elderly/fixed-income and long-time residents of rural areas who are experiencing severe economic hardship because they can’t find or afford insurance on their homes. We don’t want people losing homes to foreclosure and becoming homeless because the cost of their insurance suddenly jumps from $800 to $8,000 a year and they can’t afford the cost or find a buyer willing to pay the high insurance price tag. We are advocating for measured, balanced solutions that protect the victims of climate change while facilitating sound decision-making and resiliency.
A complicating dynamic:
A complicating dynamic in how insurers are reacting to scientific evidence of climate change is a major change in the way they underwrite (assess and price) risk. Human underwriters and actuaries have been using historical data to assess risk, price policies and choose customers for decades. But now it is common for insurance companies to rely heavily – sometimes exclusively – on models that purport to predict the future based on algorithms instead of human underwriters and historical data. We in the consumer advocacy community have identified these models as a major cause of reduced availability and affordability of property insurance in many regions of the U.S.. The models are designed by private companies that sell them to insurance companies. You don’t need to be an economist or have an MBA to understand that modeling companies want their products to appeal to insurance companies. Insurance companies are in the business of being profitable. Modeling companies have an incentive to overstate risk to help their insurance company clients justify rate increases. Integrity problems with outcome-oriented predictive analytics are compounding the impact of climate change on insurance consumers.
Principles UP supports:
- Regulators need to maintain order in property insurance markets and prevent price gouging
- Consumers need help contending with affordability, availability, and mitigation financing challenges due to climate change
- Insurers should be partnering with their customers by providing technical guidance on mitigation, discounts and incentives for risk reduction and reduced emissions
- “Green” insurance products that allow property owners to repair and rebuild using sustainable materials and heating/cooling systems
We commend insurers that are engaged in promoting sustainable development, green building practices and “pay as you drive” incentives that reward drivers for driving less.
To help disaster victims rebuild and repair “green”, we added a Rebuilding and Repairing Green unit to our Roadmap to Recovery educational workshop program in 2008.
United Policyholders continues to serve as a voice for insurance consumers where decisions related to insurance and climate change are being made by regulators, public officials and industry leaders.
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Publications and Advocacy
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Resources and Links
- Who will pay the rising costs of disasters?
- Insurance Journal: Coastal wetlands reduce property damage by 10-30%
- Insurance Journal: What Climate Change Has to Do with Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tsunamis
- America’s Preparedness Report Card
- Dire warning for New Yorkers
- NAIC Center for Insurance Policy and Research: Climate Change
- Climate Central: Tornado Outbreaks Could Have a Climate Change Assist
- UC Berkeley Lab: Availability and Affordability of Insurance Under Climate Change: A Growing Challenge for the U.S
- Coastal flooding has surged in U.S., Reuters finds
- New York Times UPshot: Buying Insurance Against Climate Change
- Rift Widening Between Energy And Insurance Industries Over Climate Change
- Wildfire Season Starts Early Amid Drought; Costs to Top $1 Billion
- Recently released National Climate Assessment warns of increases in extreme weather events
- FEMA Announces 2012 Community Resilience Innovation Challenge Recipients
- At Workshop, Residents Learn How to Go Green When Rebuilding Homes
- From Risk to Opportunity: Insurer Responses to Climate Change
- California Insurance Companies Who Submitted Responses to 2009 Climate Risk Disclosure Survey
- Wall Street Journal: Insurers Criticized For New [Climate Change based] Rate Models
- The climate wolf at the door
- Government and Academia