Fires are indiscriminate. Recovery isn’t.
Fires are indiscriminate. Recovery isn’t.

On the afternoon of Sept. 12, 2015, the Valley Fire erupted near the outskirts of Cobb, California, an unincorporated community shadowed by Cobb Mountain in the Northern Interior of California. The fire grew so rapidly that it trapped the first responders from CalFire’s Helitack Crew…
Fanning The Flames Over Homeowners’ Fire Insurance Woes
Fanning The Flames Over Homeowners’ Fire Insurance Woes

Sonora, CA — Increasing difficulties homeowners and would-be buyers are experiencing with fire insurance has Mother Lode realtors, insurers, and government officials abuzz. Tuesday at the Tuolumne County Association of Realtors TCAR) Office, members who attended the recent California Association of Realtors CAR) Legislative Day…
I Wish It Would’ve Burned’: Navigating Insurance When Your Home Survives a Wildfire
I Wish It Would’ve Burned’: Navigating Insurance When Your Home Survives a Wildfire

After Misty Attaway and her family were forced to flee from the Camp Fire on the morning of Nov. 8, she heard some shocking news: Her home in Paradise, unlike much of the rest of the town, had survived. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m…
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara Holds Malibu Town Hall
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara Holds Malibu Town Hall

Even six months after the Woolsey Fire, some fire victims are still having difficulties collecting what they’re owed by their insurers; that includes residents with partial damage to their homes as well as those experiencing total losses. To help smooth the way, California’s top insurance…
How to make insurance affordable under climate change
How to make insurance affordable under climate change

Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance firm, lost $24 billion from last year’s California wildfires, and it says global warming made a “significant contribution.” Insurer Lloyd’s of London found warmer oceans, caused by climate change, made for a 30 percent increase in storm surge damage…
Shaking Your Assets?
Shaking Your Assets?

If you own property in an area that’s prone to earthquakes, chances are your insurance excludes coverage for repairs and rebuilding due to quake damage. Insurance companies carved out coverage for this risk decades ago, and you have to shop and pay to add it…
Minding the Protection Gap
Minding the Protection Gap

Ever since my own home burned down in the 2003 Cedar Fire, I have worked to understand why so many people think they have a fully insured home, only to later learn they do not. This is a particularly troubling and stubborn problem because it…
Insurance Coverage Drying Up As California Wildfire Recovery Drags On
Insurance Coverage Drying Up As California Wildfire Recovery Drags On

After the Tubbs Fire reduced their Santa Rosa, Calif., home to ash in October 2017, Chris Keys and his wife, Sara Jakel-Keys, said deciding to rebuild was easy. But a year and a half after the fire, the road to normalcy has proved longer and…
For California Fire Survivors, Rebuilding Can Be Long And Painful
For California Fire Survivors, Rebuilding Can Be Long And Painful

After the Tubbs fire reduced their Santa Rosa home to ash in October 2017, Chris Keys and his wife Sara Jakel Keys say deciding to rebuild was easy. But a year and a half later, the road to normalcy has proven longer and more painful…
Techquake: The Biggest Threat to California’s Tech-Sector May Lie Directly Beneath its Feet
Techquake: The Biggest Threat to California’s Tech-Sector May Lie Directly Beneath its Feet

California’s technology sector has had a tough year with state and federal policymakers, to say nothing of the general public. Concerns about the size and scope of internet firms have led to a “techlash,” bringing with it uncomfortable hearings and the resurrection of truly noxious…
Two Sonoma County men file lawsuit, urging state to protect fire survivors from unlicensed adjusters
Two Sonoma County men file lawsuit, urging state to protect fire survivors from unlicensed adjusters

Two Sonoma County men are suing the California Department of Insurance for allegedly allowing out-of-state insurance adjusters to work illegally in the state without proper registration, enabling unsupervised adjusters to dole out costly bad advice to wildfire survivors. Plaintiffs Jeff Sengstack, who lost his Santa…
Wildfires make it harder for California homeowners to get insurance
Wildfires make it harder for California homeowners to get insurance

As the cost and risk of California wildfires grow, it’s getting harder for homeowners to get and keep insurance in fire-prone regions including the Sierra foothills, Tahoe and some parts of the Bay Area. Homeowners rejected by mainstream companies are turning in greater numbers to…
Wildfire Took Your Home? Don’t Count on Insurance Rebuilding It
Wildfire Took Your Home? Don’t Count on Insurance Rebuilding It

Own a home? No doubt you’ve insured it. Very sensible of you. But if that home were, say, burned to the ground, then your insurance company probably wouldn’t cover the cost of rebuilding it. Don’t feel too bad, though. It’s only partly your fault. Two-thirds…
Nip coverage gutting in the bud, UP tells CA Gov’s Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Recovery
Nip coverage gutting in the bud, UP tells CA Gov’s Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Recovery

Insurance remains a critically important source of disaster recovery financing for individuals, businesses, and government, but insurers must do a better job at insuring homes to value and paying benefits in a timely manner, UP Co-Founder and Executive Director Amy Bach told a high-level California…
UP presentation to state regulators on Disasters and Insurance – Marketplace Gaps and Fillers
UP presentation to state regulators on Disasters and Insurance – Marketplace Gaps and Fillers

In this Power Point, UP Co-Founder Amy Bach and Professor Peter Kochenburger, (U.Conn Law) presented points to state regulators on the topic of insurance gaps that surface after disasters, and products to fill those gaps that may or should be available in the marketplace. November,…
Bach Talk – Government supported property insurance programs are here to stay
Bach Talk – Government supported property insurance programs are here to stay

If a home or business owner in the United States can’t find property insurance in the private market, they can buy it through a variety of hybrid public/private arrangements, often referred to as “pools” or “Residual Market Mechanisms” (insurance lingo for programs that cover risks…
Explaining to Homeowners Reconstruction Costs Versus Other Valuations
Explaining to Homeowners Reconstruction Costs Versus Other Valuations

The source of this article is a business that provides services to the insurance industry. According to a recent CoreLogic Natural Hazard Press Release, the 2018 Camp and Woolsey Wildfires in California caused devastating losses between $15 and $19 billon. Because a home is most…
North Bay floods alert businesses to uncover the quirks of their insurance coverage
North Bay floods alert businesses to uncover the quirks of their insurance coverage

As North Bay business owners directly impacted by last month’s floods push through massive recovery efforts, they’re also having to deal with the fact that part of their business insurance coverage is useless. That part of the coverage is called business interruption insurance, part of…