States Dig Into Homeowners Insurance and Why It’s Hard to Buy (2024)

State regulators around the country asked hundreds of insurance companies on Friday to provide the details of how they price and structure their homeowner policies, part of an attempt to dig into why many property owners are struggling to get and keep coverage.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the group representing the regulators, said that state agencies wrote to more than 400 companies asking them for detailed data on their homeowners’ insurance businesses. The companies’ responses are due by early June, and they must comply or risk fines.

The association’s president, Andrew N. Mais, who is Connecticut’s insurance commissioner, said in a statement on the group’s website that the request was made to “address the critical challenge of the affordability and availability of homeowners’ insurance and the financial health of insurance companies.”

Inflation and increasingly severe weather driven by climate change have recently upended many local markets for homeowners insurance. Some major insurers have pulled out of states including Florida and California. In those places, and in others hit hard by catastrophic events like windstorms and wildfires, some homeowners have slashed their coverage to deal with the rising costs of insurance.

“The most pressing need at this time is to help communities adapt to climate-related risks and make sure they are adequately insured against events that can’t be prevented,” said Mark Friedlander, a spokesman for the insurance industry trade group, the Insurance Information Institute.

Some of the data will be shared with the Treasury Department’s Federal Insurance Office, which is looking into climate change’s effects on the insurance industry. Mr. Friedlander said it could help the federal government create policies to protect property owners in high-risk areas of the country.