Earlier this year there were rumblings that Hawaiʻi could lose one of its insurance carriers because of the turmoil in the industry. This month the news became official.

DTRIC Insurance will no longer underwrite new business, though it will honor its current customers. The Conversation talked to state Insurance Commissioner Scott Saiki about the insurance landscape.

Interview highlights

On DTRIC

SCOTT SAIKI: So DTRIC is in what’s called a runoff phase, which is basically phasing out their operation. So they will be honoring existing policies until those policies expire, which, depending on someone’s situation, that may be a year or two years from now, just depending on what kind of policy they have. So there is time for consumers to find alternative policies. The policies won’t just be canceled at a certain point in time, like automatically. We’re monitoring the policy situation now. The bulk of the policies under DTRIC are auto policies. We think that there are auto carriers in Hawaiʻi that could pick up these policies. There will be some homeowner insurance policies. So we are assessing the situation now to see what is happening within that realm, and to see whether or not there’s capacity for other insurers to pick those up.

On homeowner insurance

SAIKI: The focus of the Legislature over the past couple years was to reactivate the Hawaiʻi Hurricane Relief Fund and to also expand the coverage options under the Hawaiʻi Property Insurance Association. So HHRF is now active. It began selling policies on June 24 to condo associations, and so far, it’s been pretty successful, because the HHRF has received 192 applications. It has bound 42 policies with condo associations. From what we can tell, the savings from those 42 hurricane condo policies is about $5 million, which break it down to about $100,000 per building, but it’s also had the indirect effect of bringing down the cost of insurance on the private side, because the private insurers have been matching what the HHRF is quoting. So in some of those situations, the brokers will just place the policy on the private side rather than with the HHRF. So the numbers don’t really tell the entire story of what’s happening on the HHRF side, but so far it’s been pretty positive. On the Hawaiʻi Property Insurance Association side, HPIA is now authorized to provide coverage to condo associations. They are working through some software upgrades, they are developing a condo insurance product that can be sold. So they are looking at starting up their condo program by the end of the year.

On condo insurance

SAIKI: From what we can tell so far, it looks like condos are becoming fully insured, which is good news, because one of the issues that they faced. When they were underinsured, was that the buildings would not qualify for lending under the federal Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies, which require that condo buildings be 100% fully insured. The result was that if the building was underinsured, then you couldn’t have mortgages or refinancing going on within those buildings. But from what we’ve seen, in large part because of the Hawaiʻi Hurricane Relief Fund program, buildings are becoming fully insured.

On the increasing cost of property insurance

SAIKI: What is happening in Hawaiʻi on the property insurance level is not really different than what is happening throughout the United States. Almost every other jurisdiction in the U.S. is experiencing the same issues as Hawaiʻi, which is the increasing cost of property insurance. And there’s a couple of drivers behind that. One is the increased disaster risk that’s occurring in Hawaiʻi and in other states, that is leading to an increase in the cost of insurance. The second factor is the cost of reinsurance, which is insurance that insurance companies purchase to protect themselves. And the cost of reinsurance has increased pretty rapidly. Reinsurance, for the most part, is not regulated by local government because the reinsurance carriers are usually found in places like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands and in foreign places where we can’t regulate them. … One of the major issues for us as a state is to make sure that we make Hawaiʻi insurable, which means that we have to really mitigate, prevent and mitigate risk, whether it’s through wind or fire or other natural forces. We have to be prepared for that. Insurance companies look to see how resilient a state or jurisdiction is before entering the market. So we have to make sure that we do everything that we can to reinforce our state so that it becomes more attractive for insurance companies.

This story aired on The Conversation on Oct. 16, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.