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These insurance companies that are pulling out of CA and FL have done business in those states for ever, but now they can't afford to stay because something changed. In California, it's that we're having a lot more frequent and severe fires. In FL, IIRC, it's more frequent and severe storm damage. What would have changed that would cause these things? Gosh, I feel like it's on the tip of my tongue.
You're not wrong, but it actually gets worse than that. Florida specifically has made an ever increasing hostile environment for home owners insurance companies specifically. The way the Florida laws work make it very easy for rampant fraud to happen. Florida home owners basically know that you should never pay to replace your own roof, that's what insurance is for. Every time there's the lightest hailstorm or tropical storm you'll have storm chasers handing out fliers in neighborhoods promising to get your roof repaired at very low prices. These companies then turn around and essentially sue the insurance companies. This is just one of the ways that it's become unprofitable to run insurance in FL, but there's many and FL legislature is fighting to make it worse every day.
Yeah it’s wild, the week following a thunderstorm with hail I would get 3 or more door to door roofers every day trying to assess the roof to get insurance to pay for a replacement. I don’t know anyone in Florida who paid out of pocket to replace their roof.
Floridiot here, thanks for the succinct explanation. There's definitely more at play here than just climate change and (lack of) policy. We recently passed legislation to resolve the frivolous lawsuits but it only went into effect recently and as you can imagine, there was a massive influx of suits filed right before the deadline. It will take years or more to sort them all out so insurers are just like fuck Florida then, we're out.
So CA is a bit different. The state rules require the premium be priced basically looking back at the last 20 years of actual sustained losses in the area. That seems like a good consumer rule to prevent price gouging but State Farm are (probably quite reasonably) saying that with the increased risk due to climate change and the increased rebuild cost, they can't square those numbers.
I do wonder about Farmer's decision though, because as I understand it, in FL, they aren't similarly restricted and could price their policy however they need to balance the numbers. Perhaps PR-wise it's easier to leave the market than double everyone's prices. It's definitely a vicious cycle though, as more insurers leave the market, this risk will get concentrated on fewer and fewer players and their catastrophe models will show their increased risk and so on..