With hurricane season coming for the Southeastern U.S., could a storm of the magnitude of Helene or Milton last year impact homeowners insurance risks the way wildfires have in California?
Florida has been "more open" to the surplus market and non-standard coverage, she said. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation is Florida's equivalent to California's FAIR Plan for homeowners who cannot get coverage from private carriers. In February, Florida's insurance regulator approved a
The state has worked to get homeowners off Citizens' rolls and onto private coverage. "Florida's tried really hard to keep risk off their Citizens program by just raising the rates, basically, and getting people to go back into the private market," Hempstead said.
However,
"The federal government's basically saying states should pay for disaster response," she said. "To the extent that's really the way things are going to be, that would really pique states' interest even more in trying to get a little bit more upstream about reducing losses – because it also puts them on the hook for dealing with more of the costs."
States can also mitigate hurricane risks through construction standards. By implementing Fortified, a construction standard set by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS),
"The additional cost of putting that standard in place was really not very high," Hempstead said of Alabama's efforts. "It seems like that's a winner."
