With FAIR Plan enrollment increasing daily the legislature has still not taken up the one thing that could stabilize access to home insurance in California: A mandate that insurance companies cover all Californians who meet state standards to make their homes safe from wildfire. Still, after a big week in Sacramento several bills are still standing that will help reshape access to and affordability of home insurance for Californians, and protect communities in the wake of wildfires.
SB 429 by Senator Dave Cortese would build a public wildfire catastrophe model spearheaded by California universities to give homeowners, renters, businesses and communities access to the information they need to understand their own risk and the ability to use it to make their communities safer.
Insurance corporations now use black box catastrophe models to penalize policyholders for their wildfire risk, but policyholders have no access to the models that decide that risk or information on how to reduce it. Insurance companies are hiking rates, freezing new sales, and non-renewing policies based on wildfire predictions that are never publicly explained. A public model would return power to the people.
SB 616 by Senators Rubio, Cortese, and Stern creates a Community Wildfire Hardening Commission to set statewide best practices to protect buildings and communities from wildfire and collect data about the impacts of wildfire mitigation efforts statewide. A major concern in the wake of the recent Los Angeles fires is how to build back better and make our neighborhoods safe in the long term. Communities across the state seeking to protect against potential future wildfires face the same dilemma: What guidance to follow? There is no single place Californians can go to get consistent direction on rebuilding, retrofitting, or community defensible space best practices for wildfires. SB 616 closes this gap.
SB 495 by Senator Allen originally banned the insurance industry’s onerous practice of requiring consumers provide an itemized list of personal property for reimbursement under an insurance policy when a homeowner or renter suffers the total loss of their home in the wake of a disaster. It has since been watered down, but would still provide greater protection than current law by requiring 60% of contents coverage be paid after a declared disaster without the itemized list. The bill also extends the time for the list to be submitted to receive 100% coverage, and collects information about insurance companies about the insurance they buy for themselves.
SB 547 by Senator Perez extends the post-disaster insurance non-renewal and cancellation moratorium that currently applies only to residential policies to businesses, affordable housing providers, condo associations and other commercial policyholders in a ZIP Code within or next to the fire perimeter.
AB 493 by Assemblymember Harabedian would require mortgage companies to pay interest on insurance payments they hold for consumers – and do not release until rebuilding begins in the wake of a loss.
AB 226 by Assemblymembers Calderon and Alvarez would give the FAIR Plan access to the state IBank to issue bonds to help the FAIR Plan pay claims. This could reduce the need for the FAIR Plan to assess insurers after a large disaster. An urgency measure, the bill has reached the Senate Floor and could take effect immediately if it passes.
AB 1 by Assemblymember Connolly would require the Department of Insurance to assess whether new actions to protect a home from wildfire should be added to the list of wildfire mitigation actions home insurance companies must offer discounts for.
And AB 290 by Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan would require the FAIR Plan to accept automatic electronic payments, and give policyholders 10 days to correct and pay outstanding balances.
Passing the bills above should be a no-brainer for an industry that’s doing just fine. Just-released data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners show that property insurers cleared $25.4 billion in underwriting profit in 2024, and their net investment income surged to $164.3 billion.
