PIA Western Alliance Executive VP Kim Legato — Assistance for California Independent Agents

The Western Alliance is monitoring the situation in southern California.

We are saddened to see the toll and loss of life it has taken on residents of LA county. Our members will need our support in ways we haven’t imagined before. We will stand with them and support them any way they may need as they work to rebuild. They may need temporary housing, temporary relocations of their agency and business continuity. 

When the fires are out – the real work begins. The industry is at an inflection point. The struggle to pick up the pieces in the face of limited insurance capacity has been evident for quite some time. California's homeowners’ insurance market has long been under pressure.

Other Western Alliance states are starting to feel this as well.

While we can appreciate Insurance Commissioner Lara’s efforts to bolster the FAIR plan, it will never be an option of offering full coverage benefits to policy holders. With the financial stability of the state’s FAIR Plan remaining uncertain, these wildfires could exacerbate insurance challenges, making it even harder for homeowners in high-risk areas, urban and rural, to obtain adequate coverage.

The situation is complicated further as several major insurers have either stopped writing personal lines or pulled out of the California market all together. Insurance companies have cited high inflation, catastrophe exposure, the cost of reinsurance, and limitations of decades old insurance regulations for scaling back coverage in the state.

Commissioner Lara and his team have put some important insurance pricing policies in place. The jury is out on how successful those changes will turn out and whether they will get insurers to return. While we all wait to see insurance company response, we urge Commissioner Lara and his department to continue to listen and understand the market volatility insurance companies are facing.

Insurers need to find continued agreeable consensus to cover their exposures so they in turn can offer complete protection to policy holders. Those working on repairing California’s broker insurance market also need to bring E&S carriers to the table to help fill the gap while they work through the challenges the industry faces. 

These are not outlandish suggestions, they are common sense solutions.

We urge every agent to prepare their agency with our Agency Disaster Planning Guide and if you already have a disaster plan, review and update it. We have a guide for that too.

We also have a guide agents can share with their clients how to set up a disaster mitigation plan with their policyholders. Disaster mitigation plan for homeowners and businesses.

There isn’t a lot a homeowner can do to stop a wildfire from threatening their home, but there are mitigation efforts that can make an impact on how devastating it will be.

Be aware, prepared and take action!

Should a policyholder and their family have to evacuate, the PIA Western Alliance and its California leadership encourage agents to urge them to have an emergency kit in place before that happens.

Here are some items that need to be in that emergency kit:

• Birth certificates
• Passports or Visas
• Home insurance documents
• Car insurance documents
• Auto registrations
• Health insurance documents, medical cards, prescriptions
• Employment records
• Tax records
• Driver's licenses
• Social Security cards
• Backup ID
• Credit cards
• Medical history
• Power of attorney
• Wills
• Concealed carry permit if you have one
• Important phone numbers and contacts
• Titles, deeds, etc.
• Marriage license
• At least one statement from all financial accounts with account number, phone number, address
• All military and VA records
• Pet records including rabies and other health vaccinations

Even more important is a video that contains the contents of the home. In the emergency kit, policyholders should have a thumb drive with a video of all contents in the house and the house itself.

The video should include the content of all rooms with all drawers, cabinets and/or closets opened and contents revealed. Also include garage contents, attic contents, art works and make sure all valuables are clearly seen.

The Western Alliance has comprehensive education for agents on many topics including Disaster Planning.  We will be adding a specific topic to Wildfire Mitigation as the industry adapts to new processes and changes. See our education calendar for the full schedule.