Some of you may have seen news stories about insurance companies declining to write new business in the state of California, and we wanted to let you know how things are going in Washington.
Both State Farm and Allstate are not offering new homeowners policies in California, due to the wild fire risk and volume of claims in recent years. Both companies are continuing current policies, but are not accepting anything new. A big part of this is the state’s insurance regulatory system, which is not allowing rate increases to keep up with losses.
While we have not seen this here in Washington, we have seen moratoria on new business for specific fire events in prior years – and expect the same when fires start this year.
We have also seen an overall tightening of underwriting, and new restrictions on our new business, for example, companies are not allowing for payment plans, or do not want policies with teenaged drivers.
We urge you to take care to not have your policies cancel inadvertently; we are not able to get reinstatements the same way we could a year ago, six months ago, or even three months ago. Just because we could do something then, does not mean we can do it now.
We always want to help our clients, but, unfortunately, we do not get to make the rules. If you do find yourself in an uninsured position, we will do our best to help you fix it, but the best position to be in is the one where we don’t have to address this problem.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the current insurance climate, or if we can help with any of your insurance needs.