The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the association of U.S. state insurance regulators, has called for property market data from insurers to aggregate for a more accurate picture of the home insurance market.
The property and casualty market intelligence (PCMI) data call issued March 8 asks insurers to collect and submit 70 distinct data points to their state regulators within 90 days. NAIC will pass this data on to the US Treasury's Federal Insurance Office (FIO).
The purpose of the data call is split between reaction to the impact of climate change, and concerns about the availability and affordability of insurance, according to remarks by Andrew Mais, president of NAIC and Connecticut insurance commissioner, and Kay Noonan, general counsel at NAIC, in a March 7 media briefing about the data call.
"The climate and disasters are clearly important. There are many issues that are driven by what insurers perceive as varying climate risk. We need to know what they are," Mais said. "We need a holistic view of the market in order to understand what is happening, in order to ensure the availability and the affordability of homeowners insurance, whether it's in California or Missouri or Connecticut."
Noonan added, "If you look at the questions that the state regulators got together to ask, they're focused on the issue of affordability and availability of property insurance in their markets."
NAIC expects its data call to cover more than 80% of the U.S. property insurance market by volume, including more than 400 property insurers, according to Mais. The data will include premiums, claims, losses, limits, deductibles and coverage types, sorted at the zip code level.
Most states have not collected this data at a level as granular as by zip code, according to Aaron Brandenburg, assistant director at NAIC. Missouri, Florida, Texas, California and Massachusetts have collected data at that level or by county, but this would be new for most states, Brandenburg added.
When collecting the data, NAIC will also be looking to see whether insurance consumers are choosing flat deductibles or percentage deductibles, to better understand if and how deductibles are rising, according to Brandenburg. The data call will also include information on specialized coverages such as wind damage coverage, he added.
NAIC's PCMI data call is part of a long-term strategy to gain insight about the health of property insurance markets at both state and national levels, which will inform regulators' insights, according to Mais. "It will help assess the market concentrations and competitiveness and identify areas of need of mitigation and resilience efforts to ensure that consumers continue to have access to the coverage they need to safeguard their financial well-being and their family's futures," he said.
