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Long-form research on live enterprise decisions. Publication is selective. Every number traces to a named source. No takes without evidence.
The US Property Insurance Retreat: FAIR Plans, Reinsurance, and the New Cost of Catastrophe
Hurricane Milton, Helene, and the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires reset the catastrophe baseline. Florida and California carriers retrenched, residual markets ballooned, and reinsurance pricing softened off a cyclical peak while cat bond issuance hit a record. The 2026 question is whether regulatory reform and capital innovation can restore admitted market capacity before the next megacat.
Hurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm at Siesta Key, Florida on October 9, 2024, generating roughly USD 17 billion in insured losses out of USD 50 billion in total economic damage. Two weeks earlier, on September 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene struck the Big Bend coast as a Category 4, with USD 7 billion of insured loss concent...
The Property Insurance Retreat: Florida, California, and the Climate Repricing of US Real Estate
State Farm and Allstate non-renewing California, Florida's Citizens at 1.4 million policies, reinsurance retrocession costs at multi-decade highs, and the FAIR plan and Citizens together carrying climate risk that private balance sheets have walked away from.
The US property insurance market is running a slow climate repricing. State Farm announced in May 2023 it would stop writing new homeowners policies in California, and Allstate had already done so. State Farm filed a 30 percent rate increase request that the California Department of Insurance approved in part in early 2025. Florida's Citi...