State Farm has fired the first shot in what might become a war against California home and apartment owners, though, one with eventual costs amounting to billions of dollars. Allstate Insurance one week later admitted that it has already joined in.
“They cannot legally just do this on their own,” said Harvey Rosenfield, the author of that proposition, the law that governs insurance rates in California. He also founded the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group. “Any refusal to write new policies will affect rates people pay, and the commissioner must approve anything affecting rates.”
Insurance companies hate this, even with State Farm the largest operator in California, taking in about $7 billion in property insurance premiums here each year and controlling almost 9% of the market. Several other companies also are pushing for insurance rate increases, all claiming that risks from wildfires justify almost any price.
That also happened in the mid-1990s, when then-Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, a former Republican Assemblymember, acquiesced as the industry blacklisted California. The dispute then was over a rule requiring companies selling homeowner insurance also to offer earthquake coverage. His failure to act caused the Legislature in 1996 to create the California Earthquake Authority , now the state’s pre-eminent quake insurer. To the CEA’s immense good fortune, a lull in very large quakes since 1994 has allowed a buildup of many billions of dollars in reserves to pay claims if and when large new temblors occur.