Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 09/01/2026 9:49:01 AM PDT by Texas Fossil
The governor directed state insurance regulators to crack down on certain underwriting practices and pursue measures aimed at lowering costs.
“The average annual homeowners insurance premium in Texas has risen 79 percent in six years,” said Abbott. “High insurance costs hit Texas families hard. Today I direct the Texas Department of Insurance to put consumers first and take action that makes property and casualty insurance more affordable.”
In a letter sent Monday to Texas Insurance Commissioner Amanda Crawford, Abbott noted that the average annual homeowners insurance premium has climbed from under $2,000 in 2020 to more than $3,500 in 2026.
Abbott directed the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) to take several steps, including prohibiting insurers from refusing to write or renew residential property insurance policies based on the age of a home or individual components such as the roof.
The agency must also require insurers to account for a home’s FORTIFIED roof status when setting rates. FORTIFIED is a construction and roofing standard developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety designed to make homes more resistant to severe weather, including high winds and hail.
Under Abbott’s directive, homeowners with roofs meeting the standard would have that status factored into their insurance rates in an effort to lower premiums. The letter does not specify how large those reductions would be.
Another directive targets what Abbott called “price optimization,” a practice in which insurers use personal data unrelated to insured risk to determine prices.
Abbott ordered TDI to issue a bulletin banning the practice for all products regulated by the agency.
The governor also ordered the creation of an Insurance Fraud Task Force, arguing that fraud makes insurance more expensive for consumers.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
ESG was not mentioned, but it is a major part of the Scam.
Not Texas but our homeowner’s policy went up 37% this year and 79% over two years. Not in a flood, wildfire or hurricane zone.
This goes way back.
CommercialRisk @ComRiskOnline (Mar 9, 2023)
Texas considers ban on insurers using ESG scores to underwrite (Insurance)
https://www.commercialriskonline.com/texas-considers-ban-on-insurers-using-esg-scores-to-underwrite/
Reactions might be different if the headline read:
“Abbott Orders Action as Texas Homeowners Insurance Premiums Surge 79 Percent”
I had no control of the title.
Insurance companies have a lot of lobbyists. And there are a lot of things the underwriters simply bring up out of thing air.
A company that rhymes with Smogressive raised my homeowners/wind and hail from $1462 to over $7000 in one year.
Not only that but they took the moneby from my escrow before I had a chance to be notified of the astronomical increase BUT since there was no overage in my escrow account, my MORTGAGE was increased WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE and my monthly payment went up EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS/month.
Of course, I immediately changed companies but Smogressive held onto my money for over 60 days until my policy expired.
I ended up getting my money back AFTER 60 days and got another company so my mortgage went down but I had to do a lot of footwork to unwind their crap.
Do NOT wait to find out how much your policy is going to increase so you can change before they are allowed to process your payment sixty days before the expiration of your policy.
Mine actually went down this year. Hail coverage was with a higher deductible, though.
As long as the price of the risk is what is driving the cost, that is already appropriate.
Also cost to rebuild has skyrocketed.
“Reactions might be different if the headline read:”
The headline you show is exactly the headline of the article.
The other scam insurance companies engage in to massively increase rates is coming up with insane rebuilding costs for your house.
They turn your modest suburban home into a mansion to estimate the cost of replacing it. Of course when it comes time to actually replace your house it’s a dirt floor hovel.
Turn off the hurricanes in Texas
About f’ing time - these insurance companies are all colluding together to charge as much as possible.
“Another directive targets what Abbott called “price optimization,” a practice in which insurers use personal data unrelated to insured risk to determine prices.” This should be a flat-out illegal practice. Someone’s credit rating, for example, is utterly unrelated to how much of a risk their property may be...and if the less credit-worthy file false claims, well that’s a crime, isn’t it? The validity of any particular claim is what insurance adjusters are hired to determine, isn’t it?
Abbott needs to do the exact same WRT auto insurance rates in this state - that’s ALSO out of hand, and there’s lots of collusion and lots of illegal practices by the insurance companies.
Maybe hang a couple of insurance company executives and this BS will stop for a while.
It pays to shop even if you are somehow still ok. Rates get raised more on old customers than new ones. Can’t see how this is legal but it happens
Keep them as honest as you can. None of them is your friend.
They raise your rates, even though you never have a claim. But when you do...they don’t want to pay.
Biggest gdamn racket ever.
Insurance company pulled something on me similar to that some years ago. I couldn’t afford the new rates & deductibles at the time, so just dropped out. I think it payed off actually. I will have to pay for a new roof, but saved more than that in the meantime.
We have been in our house 21 years. The only thing we have ever asked of State Farm was help on repairing was our outbuilding damaged by a downed tree in a storm. I had to pay the $1,000 deductible and they paid the other $1,000 to cover the removal of the limbs and parts of the downed tree that damaged my building. I have never missed a payment as they automatically take it out of my checking account. Yet, every damned cycle, my home insurance keeps going up to cover the damages to any other homes. Damned insurance companies make sure to cover any and all payments for repairs they have to pay out, plus a raise. Bunch of damned crooks.
ok abbott, you poked your head up, now do something about flock cameras.
How much have home values inflated over the same time period?
Have a house that doubled in value over the last 10 years, guess what has happened to my homeowners policy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.