MONTPELIER, Vt. — The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation is actively participating in nation-wide efforts to collect and analyze insurance claim information that will provide important insights into property insurance market costs, coverages and protection gaps. The Department recognizes the critical importance of market intelligence at a time when consumers, insurance regulators and industry face the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters.
State insurance regulators working through the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) in March issued the Property & Casualty Market Intelligence Data Call (PCMI), and data collection is ongoing through June 6, 2024. The NAIC is a standard-setting and regulatory support organization comprised of the chief insurance regulators of the U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories. A data call requires insurers to report certain information to regulators. The PCMI data call will collect information regarding homeowners’ insurance at a state and zip code level. A steering committee of state insurance regulators will help the NAIC review the data and determine the national-level analysis to be shared with the public. The NAIC anticipates releasing insights in the second half of 2024. NAIC Members also have agreed to share an anonymized subset of the data collected with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO).
State insurance regulators started with the goal of gathering data from insurers collectively representing 80 percent of the national homeowners’ insurance market by premium volume to better understand trends in pricing, coverage, and deductibles. The intent was not to examine every single carrier across the country.
Given the Department's ongoing focus on actively monitoring climate change and insurance markets, it quickly volunteered to help drive this effort as a member of the PCMI Data Call drafting group. In addition to these efforts, other Department work in this area includes:
- The Department's 2021 Impacts of Climate Change on Vermont Insurance's Insurance Industry Report
- Insurance Bulletin 227's Flood and Rain Event Data Call
- Participation in the NAIC’s annual climate risk disclosure survey
- Membership on the NAIC's Climate and Resiliency Task Force which recently issued its National Climate Resilience Strategy for Insurance
- Membership on Property and Casualty Insurance Committee responsible for the PCMI data call
- Membership in the Sustainable Insurance Forum, a global group of insurance regulators working on sustainability issues facing the insurance sector
- Periodic issue-specific market surveillance and data surveys
- Through this collaborative approach in the PCMI data call, state insurance regulators will receive comprehensive, nationwide data essential to making good decisions as they work to protect consumers and the marketplace.
To ensure a national perspective, state insurance regulators opted to have the domestic lead regulator of an insurer within the scope of the data call request company-wide data in every state in which the company operates. In this way, gathering nationwide data from firms that collectively comprise 80 percent of the national market is possible without all states participating – though all states were encouraged to do so for any companies in their market that were not part of the target 80 percent. This approach served as a baseline, and as a result, the PCMI Data Call will have data on every state’s market. The Department opted to participate directly to support this initiative and to build upon its individual efforts to understand and address the property insurance market challenges posed by climate-related risk.
The Department works hard to ensure the affordability and availability of insurance in Vermont and to protect consumers (read more about some of what it does). The Department encourages all consumers to reach out if needing help with any insurance matters.
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