California is too easy on insurers, stifles competition

By Patrick Wolff, especially for CalMatters

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Guest Comment written by

As the first anniversary of Southern California’s devastating wildfires approaches, CalMatters asked candidates for the 2026 state insurance commissioner race to share thoughts on what the state can do to help victims and stabilize insurers. This is the first of several candidate responses.

Insurance regulation in California is dysfunctional because unqualified politicians continue to run for insurance commissioner as a springboard.

I have been a lifelong Democrat for over two decades insurance and financial experiencefirst building an auto and home insurance brokerage business, then working as a financial analyst. This is my first run for elected office and I will not run for another office if elected.

My only ambition is to fix what Sacramento broke.

Solving our insurance crisis starts with reorienting the California Department of Insurance. The regulation of the behavior of insurance companies is too lax, but their access to the market is too strictly controlled. Customers lose both ways. mine the plan flips the scriptholding insurance companies accountable while increasing choice and competition.

The recently formed Smoke Claims and Recovery Task Force is an example of a lack of accountability from insurance companies. Modern wildfires cause unprecedented smoke damage, requiring new coverage standards. But the reporting found the task force unacceptable benefits insurance companies over science. I will create a new, impartial task force to issue reliable standards and then make insurance companies follow them.

Another drawback of accountability is claims payments. The state insurance department collects Annual reports on market behavioridentifying insurers who unfair delay or denial of claims. However, the insurance industry has lobby for the anonymization of this dataprotecting individual companies. I will have the insurance department publish company-specific data and publish a report card on claims performance for each insurance company, allowing customers to reward good actors and punish bad actors.

Customer empowerment requires robust choice and competition, but the insurance department stifles both with bureaucratic red tape. Insurance companies filing for product or rate changes wait 300 days for review vs. 60 days in other states and with far less predictable decisions than any other state because the department micromanages each case.

These endless delays and capricious decisions are disastrous, causing insurers to cancel policies and leave California. I will streamline submission deadlines and reserve rigorous reviews for special cases only if necessary. Insurance companies will flock to our giant market once they have clear rules that provide the reasonable security and flexibility they need to operate economically.

As more companies come in, more choice and competition will follow.

With strong regulation that holds insurance companies accountable and empowers customers, wide choice and competition will keep prices from rising. But to hold ourselves accountable that the market works and pricing is fair, I will publish an annual benchmarking report comparing California to all other western fire-affected states.

As insurance becomes abundant again in California, people will no longer need to turn to A FAIR plan in despair. Nevertheless, the FAIR plan remains necessary and should be supported. I will require all insurance companies operating in California to invest in improving FAIR Plan service. In return, we must allow fair plan rates to become fully actuarially soundas required by statute. This will stabilize FAIR Plan’s finances and incentivize customers to obtain better and cheaper coverage in the regular market.

Fixing insurance regulation can hold insurance companies accountable, provide transparency, make insurance widely available, prevent price gouging, and stabilize the FAIR plan. But to cut costs where they belong, we need to aggressively reduce wildfire risk.

To protect homes, the state should provide clear guidelines for home hardening that are compliant with the insurance company and come with accompanying rebates. Since home hardening helps everyone, but burdens the home owner, the insurance department should development of financial assistance programs homeowners need and deserve.

Statewide, the way to sustainably reduce the cost of wildfire risk — plus save lives and property — is to take better care of our forests. It is outrageous that our state government has allowed the bushfire risk to get so bad. As Insurance Commissioner, I will fight relentlessly for better forest management.

California needs and deserves a functioning insurance system. With the right leadership, we can finally make insurance work right for everyone in California.

Candidate guest comments are published in the order they are received.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.