[alephnerd]

The major reason insurers are leaving is because California has been considering enforcing Prop 103 recently, which has begun spooking insurance providers into leaving.

The Insurance Commissioner is also an elected position now, so there is an incentive for them to succumb to populist pressures to climb up the poltical ladder (eg. Governer, Senator, Congressmember)

Edit: listen to CharlesW. I'm incorrect on the fact that it wasn't enforced until recently

[dangus]

Huh? Prop 103 is from 1988.

The article cites wildfires and close proximity of buildings (again, wildfires) as reasons to withdraw.

[alephnerd]

Yep! But Lara only recently threated to bring in enforcement after negotiations with Insurers over liability failed [0]

It's never actually been enforced before in CA.

Edit: listen to CharlesW. I'm incorrect on the fact that it wasn't enforced until recently

[0] - https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-climate/2023...

[CharlesW]

> It's never actually been enforced before in CA.

Incorrect, it's been enforced since it passed. Soon after it passed, insurance companies refunded over $1.2 billion to consumers based on California Department of Insurance (CDI) mandates. You can find many more examples.

https://consumerfed.org/pdfs/whatworks-report_nov2013_hunter...

[underseacables]

Lara could make radical changes if he wanted to, but ever since the court sided with him twice against the FAIR association, the insurance companies have sort of gone to war against him.

[timr]

The article also mentions that one of the proposed fixes is to allow forward pricing of the insurance market, and more flexible rate change regulations.

Right now, California does not allow pricing of insurance policies except on a few non-standard factors. These factors do not include "proximity to wildfire risk areas", which means that insurers lost a lot of money in the big wildfires of 2017-2018. The state refuses to change, so the insurers are pulling out of the market.

Framing this as "because of wildfires" is technically true, but misses the point. The problem is that insurers in CA can't accurately price for wildfire risk.

[csdreamer7]

This explains a lot. Most of CA's population does not live in wildfire prone zones. But most of the rural parts do. This will price them out of their homes. Parts of the central valley, the mountains, and really north California.

They also tend to be the more anti-government types. One family in an unincorporated part of the mountains refused to pay the voluntary firefighter service fee. When their home caught on fire the firefights just watched it and put out the parts that threatened a neighbor's house who did pay the fee.

[bombcar]

More than just rural areas are at risk now - but it may not be correctly accounted for. Much of Southern California has canyons that can bring fires much closer to urban areas than expected - as far back as 2007.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2007_California_wildfi...