• tal@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    They are the largest residential homeowners insurers in California, insuring 1 in 5 homes.

    “The rate filing that State Farm just made yesterday (Thursday), they’re triggering a rarely used part of the insurance law,” said Soller.

    "It’s a regulation meant to address a company’s financial solvency. That’s what they’re saying and we’re going to look closely at that, and we have some serious questions about State Farm’s financial condition and we’re going to get to the bottom of it. "

    That actually sounds like a rather bigger deal that I first thought from the title, if they’re on the brink of going under…

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      State Farm of California is at risk of insolvency due to the risks associated with home owners insurance there. This has been coming for decades and other insurers have even put multiyear pauses on issuing new policies in the past.

      • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 day ago

        Do the insurance companies shield themselves by dividing into regional/state zones?

        Edit: also, because it seems it’d be safer to balance risk v reward across the whole country. (They also invest insurance money in the stock market where most of their profit comes from.) Although, I suppose it’d be easier to grift states of their money when it looks like a subsidiary is failing rather than just looking at the whole balance sheet instead.

    • batmaniam@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Climate change and the housing crisis means both the cost of replacing a home AND the likelihood of needing to is going up. They may not be on the brink of going under, but may be trying to avoid getting into that position.

      It is an enormous problem. When a property becomes un-insurable it loses value. When that happens to a TON of property it’ll have massive knock ons. Something like 1/3rd of all assets in the US are commercial realestate. This next adjustment will not be pretty, and the real irony is a ton of people who got priced out of home ownership in the first place are going to suffer no matter what.