California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign several wildfire and health-related bills that have passed the Legislature and are now awaiting the governor’s approval.

“They reflect our collective responsibility to help individuals, communities, and businesses recover from disasters on their own terms. Signing these bills will strengthen California’s leadership in protecting insurance consumers through the latest fire science and technology.”

Lara urged Newsom to sign the bills, including:

AB 888 (The California Safe Homes Act): Aims to protects homes and access to insurance by establishing a new grant program within the California Department of Insurance to support qualifying residents in obtaining new or replacement fire-safe roofs and creating fire-safe mitigation actions within five feet of the structure and to be included in communitywide safety programs, covering part or all of the costs.

SB 429 (The California Wildfire Public Catastrophe Model Act): Designed to enhance community safety and education, allowing the CDI to issue grants to establish a publicly available source of wildfire loss data.

SB 547 (The Business Insurance Protection Act): Would expands the current residential property insurance moratorium law to commercial property insurance, protecting businesses, HOAs, condos, affordable housing units, small businesses, and non-profits, among other businesses, from being non-renewed or cancelled from their commercial property insurer for one-year following a gubernatorial emergency declaration.

SB 616 (The California Community Fire Hardening Commission Act): Establishes an independent statewide commission chaired by the insurance commissioner to make recommendations to increase the speed and scale of home and community hardening throughout our state as well as to create a stronger statewide inspection system aimed at helping people get home- and community-hardening insurance discounts and improve wildfire safety for entire communities.

SB 495 (Eliminate “The List” Act): Designed to increase payouts to wildfire survivors by requiring insurers to cover 60% of contents coverage limits, with a cap of $350,000, without a detailed inventory. The bill also gives policyholders 100 days to submit proof of loss with potential three-month extensions, and requires insurance companies to provide the CDI with annual reinsurance and catastrophic model data to assist with the regulation of insurance rates.

AB 1 (The Insurance and Wildfire Safety Act) Aims to enhance insurance discounts by requiring the CDI to regularly review the department’s Safer from Wildfires regulations for updates reflecting advances in science, safety and mitigation.

AB 226 (The FAIR Plan Sustainability Act): Would allow the FAIR Plan to access catastrophe bonds and a line of credit, if certain terms are met and the insurance commissioner grants the authority to do so.

Topics
Catastrophe
Natural Disasters
California
Legislation
Wildfire