North Carolina is dead last, scoring a D for the third year in a row. The only A+ was awarded to Vermont. In December, the R Street Institute published their 2016 Insurance Regulation Report Card.
For the third straight year, the report found that Vermont had the best insurance regulatory environment in the United States.
Other states receiving either an A or A- were Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, Utah, and Wisconsin.
Florida was awarded a failing score—and the lowest ranking in 2011—but because of Citizens depopulation, the state is now the middle of the ranks.
The report used three questions to rank the states and while they didn’t directly focus on claims, a high score to states with good property insurance products is beneficial to policyholders who will later have claims.
The annual report grades each state across seven dimensions. The three fundamental questions the report seeks to answer are:
- 1. How free are consumers to choose the insurance products they want?
- 2. How free are insurers to provide the insurance products consumers want?
- 3. How effectively are states discharging their duties to monitor insurer solvency and foster competitive, private insurance markets?
Hurricanes Matthew and Hermine were also discussed by R Street in their report:
Loss Ratios: As this year’s landfalls of Hurricane Hermine and Hurricane Matthew demonstrated, our reliance on five-year average loss ratios is even more important in the homeowners insurance market, where catastrophes can introduce outsized losses in any given year. The nationwide five-year average loss ratio was 56.3 and the mean of the 50 states was 59.4, with a standard deviation of 14.4.
You can read the complete report here.
