Climate Change Driving Rise in Non-Renewal of Homeowners Insurance, Senate Investigation Reveals
Consumers and governments feeling higher costs from climate change, posing risk for economy
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Climate change poses dangerous risks to the financial system and the economy as a whole, and the impacts of climate change are already driving a spike in non-renewal of homeowners insurance policies, according to two sweeping reports from the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget. In the committee’s final hearing of this Congress today, Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is diving deeper into the investigation’s findings entitled “Next to Fall: The Climate-Driven Insurance Crisis is Here—And Getting Worse.”
In response to the reports, Carly Fabian, senior insurance policy advocate with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, issued the following statement:
“For a growing number of households, climate change is now imposing significant financial burdens. The lack of transparency from the insurance industry and state regulators has obscured the full extent of the crisis for too long. This new data is a vital step to address the blindspot created by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ and the Federal Insurance Office’s slow approach to climate change. As insurance companies erode their own markets by dropping policyholders and enabling fossil fuel expansion that leads to more climate-driven disasters, policymakers must act to hold both insurance companies and the fossil fuel companies they insure and invest in accountable.”