Written by by Stephen Hobbs at yahoo.com
State Farm plans to not renew roughly 72,000 property and commercial apartment policies in California starting this summer, the company announced Wednesday.
About 30,000 of the affected policies will be for homeowner, rental, residential community association and business owner insurance. The other approximately 42,000 will be for commercial apartment policies.
That will make up a little more than 2% of the company’s footprint in the state, the announcement said. It was California’s largest property insurer in 2022 — the most recent data available — according to the Department of Insurance.
The decision follows the company’s announcement in May that it would stop accepting new applications for property and business policies. At the time, State Farm cited higher construction costs, a growing risk from catastrophic events, such as wildfires, and challenges related to how it insures its own business.
In Wednesday’s announcement, the company referenced those same challenges as well as “the limitations of working within decades-old insurance regulations.”
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has announced regulatory changes that his department is rolling out this year.
Michael Soller, a department spokesman, said in an emailed statement Thursday the agency was confident the actions “will improve conditions for the overall market.”