State lawmakers plans for homeowners insurance relief faces hurdles
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Because of massive disasters like the Lahaina wildfire and the fires in Los Angeles, insurance experts are predicting a grim future for insurance rates.
'I foresee the rates will stay high and depending on how the rest of 2025 goes, if we continue to see disasters that are worse than expected, then we will probably see higher rates in the future as well,' said insurance agent Kendrick Nishiguchi.
One plan that lawmakers have to help is to resurrect the Hawaii Property Insurance Association and the Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund. But that admittedly has some hurdles.
'HPIA is not set up to write condominium insurance,' said Matt Chun, HPIA board chair at a joint committee hearing at the state capitol. 'It's a new, developing event, emerging event. I believe some of the catalyst is the Lahaina, Maui fires because what it did is, it made a lot of our standard carriers gunshy, re-evaluate what they'd like to write, and started to not wanna write some of these buildings.'
HPIA is already operating but needs to be re-structured to help the current situation. But the Hurricane Relief Fund is starting from scratch and is still finalizing contract details with consultant AON.
'There's been no firm timeline,' said Ed Haik, HHRF board chair at the same hearing. 'We're still in the contracting phase which really is not incumbent on hid or the board so far.'
'If you guys are not under contract yet, can you also start looking for a different company to contract with? Because this is, I mean, getting a little ridiculous I think,' said Rep. Scot Matayoshi, House Consumer Protection & Commerce chair.
'It's a difficult problem,' said Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, Senate Commerce & Consumer Protection chair. 'It's scary. You know if the state of Hawaii just started providing insurance to all homeowners statewide and we have another catastrophe, we could go bankrupt.'
Lawmakers are looking at at least 10 insurance bills this session. While even they admit there might not be a silver bullet to the problem, they are looking at anything and everything to help.'I think people need to temper their expecations a little too,' Matayoshi said. 'I think people are expecting us come up with a silver bullet, but with the LA wildfires, with other natural disasters around the world really, the re-insurance market is gonna go up and I want people to just be prepared that the solution may not as immediate as they'd like.'
'Nothings gonna come quickly enough,' Keohokalole said. 'And we're not likely be able to reduce prices back to what people remember, but we can try and provide some relief and stabilize the market.'
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