The increasing risk of wildfires in Colorado is driving insurance carriers to raise premiums on homeowners’ policies — if they decide to insure them at all — and now the state’s insurance chi…
The increasing risk of wildfires in Colorado is driving insurance carriers to raise premiums on homeowners’ policies — if they decide to insure them at all — and now the state’s insurance chief is suggesting a publicly funded pool of money be established to provide property insurance for those who can’t find it in the open market.
“That fundamentally changed two or three months ago,” Conway said during an October public meeting. “My phone started ringing from consumers saying they were having a huge issue with availability and coverage across the state.” Dave Baron, his wife Kim Meyer and their 18-month-old son Kyler look over the ruins of their Louisville home that burned in the Marshall Fire on Feb. 15, 2022. The Barons closed on their $1.3 million home in Louisville on Aug. 31, 2021. They’d finally gotten everything unpacked and organized for a New Year’s housewarming party when it was destroyed in the Dec. 30 Marshall fire.
“Up until the last 10, 15, 20 years, we didn’t have availability issues,” Conway said. “We didn’t have catastrophes in the mountain west part of the country that would lead to insurance companies having some concerns and having trepidation about providing insurance. That’s obviously changed, folks. Climate change is here. Climate change is impacting us all on a daily basis. It’s hitting us because of fires.
Michael Perizzolo, left, and his brother Joe stand in a field across from East Grand Middle School watching the smoke roll in from the East Troublesome Wildfire in Granby on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. “It’s like what’s happening in Florida with the hurricane coverage,” Wilkinson said. “It’s the same thing happening in Colorado, except it’s fires that are driving the exodus.”
The changes are being driven by the reinsurance market, he said. Frontline insurance companies such as State Farm and Farmers Insurance buy insurance from massive global companies to back them up in case they have to pay for catastrophic losses in a disaster. Over the years, they’ve expanded to other states and to cover people who can’t find insurance because of hurricanes and wildfires, said Robert Hartwig, director of the Center for Risk and Uncertainty Management at the University of South Carolina.
Depending on how a state structures them, policies bought through a last-resort pool may cost more or less than the average private insurance policy and may offer less robust coverage, such as lacking liability coverage, Friedlander said. They cover losses due to fire, wind, theft, vandalism and civil disturbances, offering protection where none would otherwise exist.
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