Home insurance

It's kind of hard for us to believe in the New England area where property taxes are high.

And while home insurance has gone up quite a bit, it's not nearly as painful as it is for people in some other parts of the country, whether you talk about Florida or for the hurricanes or California for the fire risk.

But research has found, according to Bloomberg intelligence analyst Andrew John Stevenson, that in fact, two-thirds of U.S. counties' homeowner insurance premiums now cost more than property taxes.

That is astounding to me that you're now looking in these particular counties, two-thirds of the counties in the country, that for insurance, you're talking about $3,100 a year compared with $2,400 for property taxes.

But this anti-establishment stuff that we were talking about earlier and how it impacts the benefits arena, it's going to impact the property casualty arena too.

There was just recently a congressional delegation to investigate The role that global reinsurers play in jacking up the prices of homeowners insurance, specifically in Nebraska.

And why is homeowners insurance now so much more expensive than underlying mortgages for so many Americans? And it was an investigation that I personally welcomed because we continue to struggle to differentiate our sector of the industry from so many other sectors that are specifically responsible for or have a larger role in playing in the homeowners insurance market.

So I used it as an opportunity and treated it as an opportunity to underscore the strengths of the commercial reinsurance market and how we actually help mitigate costs, spreading the risk.

This affordability journey that we see hitting the benefits market is not that far away from hitting the property casualty market as well.

That means black homeowners can pay more for the very protection designed to preserve their biggest source of wealth, even as climate change puts many historically black neighborhoods at greater risk of damage.

The report, Redlined, the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the Cost of Homeowners Insurance, found that Michigan has the worst premium gap for black neighborhoods of any state.

But it's a problem that exists to some degree everywhere, with home insurance costing 16% higher in black neighborhoods compared to predominantly white areas.

On average, that's $500 more per year for people living in black neighborhoods, or $15,000 over a 30-year mortgage.

With home insurance rates skyrocketing due to climate change, black people are at a huge disadvantage, with the market already priced against them.

The disparity matters because homeowners insurance is supposed to be a financial backstop against disaster.

Yet black homeowners can face higher costs for that protection, even as climate change disproportionately increases the threats to homes in black neighborhoods.

Historically, black neighborhoods are often more exposed to flooding, extreme heat, and other climate hazards, in part because decades of segregation, redlining, and disinvestment shaped where black families could buy homes and how much infrastructure those communities received.

Amica has done it again.

For the second consecutive year, the company ranked highest in the J.D. Power twenty-twenty-six US Home Insurance Study for homeowners insurance.

The recognition underscores Amica's strength across several key dimensions.

It earned top scores for product and coverage offerings, ease of doing business, people and, notably, trust.