Allstate hits California homeowners with 34.1% rate hike
Move comes after roughly 17,000 Liberty Mutual customers hear they are losing fire insurance.
Allstate customers in California face a 34.1% rate hike to their homeowners’ premiums.
The rate hike was recently approved by the California Department of Insurance and is expected to impact over 350,000 policyholders statewide in November.
“This home insurance rate approval allows us to continue protecting our existing customers as we work with the California Department of Insurance to improve coverage availability and create a more viable and sustainable homeowners insurance market for consumers in the state,” a company spokesperson told PropertyCasualty360.com. “Higher home values and repair costs coupled with more frequent, severe weather lead to higher payments to help customers recover, so we need to adjust rates to better reflect the cost of protecting our customers.”
According to the spokesperson, three things are needed for providers to offer home insurance policies to more Californians:
- The ability to obtain timely rate approvals that fully reflect the cost of providing protection to customers;
- The use of advanced wildfire modeling;
- The ability for insurance prices to account for reinsurance costs.
Allstate, California’s fourth-largest property and casualty insurance provider, stopped accepting new insurance property applications in 2023.
Meanwhile, roughly 17,000 Liberty Mutual customers in California were told in August they would lose their fire insurance.
Subsidiary Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Company is canceling dwelling fire insurance for the policyholders, after the company stopped writing the policies under the brand in California (and other states) last year.
Already in 2024, more than 751,327 acres in California have been burned by 4,613 wildfires. The state saw a record 4,397,809 acres destroyed by wildfires in 2020.
See also: