Differences in state regulations play a major role in the growing crisis over home insurance, which is closely linked to the climate emergency propelled by fossil fuels.
This is one part of our effort to help shed light on the home insurance crisis. It is based on our compilation of publicly available information. We have done our best to be comprehensive and accurate. Please contact stancil@therevolvingdoorproject.org with corrections or suggestions about how to improve this resource.
This resource was originally published in March 2026 and will be updated periodically.
In the United States, the insurance industry is regulated primarily at the state level due to a 1945 federal law called the McCarran-Ferguson Act. State-based regulations vary widely, worsening inequities that make home insurance less accessible and affordable for many people. The problem is compounded by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, which intensifies extreme weather disasters.
The Revolving Door Project has created a series of interactive maps and tables to provide insight into several aspects of home insurance regulation. Each visualization is embeddable. Please feel free to use any or all of them as you see fit. For a detailed breakdown of state-level insurance policy, see this report from Climate Cabinet Education.
Rate Approval Processes
As I wrote recently, “State-based variation in rate regulation means that insurers charge higher premiums in the states where less stringent review processes make it easier to do so. Insurers often complain that higher regulation states are preventing them from charging accurate (i.e., higher) prices, sometimes justifying underwriting pullbacks or threatening further ones on these grounds—an attempt to bully officials into accepting deregulation or premium hikes.”
According to the Treasury Department’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO), only 15 jurisdictions require “prior approval” for rate hikes, meaning that an insurer must ask a commissioner’s office for permission to raise rates and may not implement changes until regulators sign off. FIO says that 24 jurisdictions rely on a “file-and-use” system, where an insurer files a rate hike with the commissioner’s office, which may object within a predefined number of days. If no objection is raised, the insurer can implement the change.1 One state (Alaska) uses a “flex band” system, which is a hybrid of file-and-use and prior approval rules. If an insurer requests a rate below a certain threshold, the filing is typically treated with a file-and-use approach; if an insurer requests a rate increase above a certain threshold, the filing is typically subject to prior approval.
Ten jurisdictions follow a “use-and-file” system, where an insurer can offer coverage at certain rates while simultaneously filing those rates with the commissioner’s office. If the office does not raise an objection within a set timeframe, the insurer may proceed with the rates. One state (Wyoming) uses an “open rating” system in which an insurer sets rates with a presumption that they comply with the state’s regulations and the insurance commissioner only intervenes in limited circumstances. Notably, rates filed by insurers in file-and-use states and use-and-file states are also rarely challenged.
The wide variance in rate regulation between states requiring prior approval of rates and the large majority of states that do not (see Map 1) has significant impacts on rates paid by consumers. For more information about state oversight of home insurance rate setting, see this resource from the Equitable and Just Insurance Initiative, which includes recommendations for reform.
Map 1
Relative Capacity (Personnel)
Diverging rate approval processes aren’t the only important factor affecting insurance regulation. Staffing and budgets also vary between jurisdictions. This is a key issue because without sufficient resources, it’s impossible for state-level insurance offices to adequately oversee the powerful financial institutions they’ve been tasked with regulating. Beyond protecting consumers from excessive rates and market conduct abuses, state insurance regulators also have an important role to play in maintaining financial stability by promoting the solvency of insurance companies.
One way to make sense of this issue is to compare the number of people working in each state insurance office to the size of that state’s insurance market, both in terms of the number of insurers and premium volume.
First, let’s define a few terms. We’ll focus here on the admitted market, which refers to policies sold by carriers that are licensed and regulated by state insurance departments. State insurance commissioners regulate all insurance companies that are licensed to do business in their state. However, commissioners have additional responsibilities when it comes to domestic insurers, which are domiciled (i.e., headquartered) in their state. As the primary regulator of domestic insurers, commissioners are tasked with overseeing the financial solvency of these companies in addition to their products, rates, and market conduct. Firms that are domiciled in other states are called foreign insurers. If a commissioner licenses a foreign insurer to do business in her state, then she regulates its products, rates (although as discussed above the majority of states effectively do not regulate rates), and market conduct.
Since we’re primarily concerned with the regulation of home insurance, we’ll also isolate state-level data on property and casualty (P&C) insurers, which can be domestic or foreign. P&C insurance covers physical assets (home, auto, and personal items) and provides liability protection to indemnify policyholders who are found legally responsible for injuring another person or damaging their property.
To summarize, within the admitted market, state insurance commissioners regulate licensed foreign companies (products, rates, and market conduct) and domestic companies (products, rates, and market conduct plus solvency). In the tables and maps that follow, you will see references to insurers (domestic and licensed foreign), domestic insurers, P&C insurers (domestic and licensed foreign), and domestic P&C insurers.
Table 1 and Map 2 depict the relative capacity of state insurance departments in terms of personnel per regulated entity. By comparing the number of people working in each insurance office to the number of admitted insurance companies operating there, we can see personnel per type of licensed entity.
On average, state insurance departments employ 0.13 people per insurer. California (0.97), Texas (0.61), and New York (0.39) have the highest relative office capacity, while Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Wyoming have the lowest at 0.02 personnel per insurer. Worryingly, some states that oversee a large number of insurers have relatively small offices. For example, there are 3,073 insurers operating in New Mexico (1st out of 56) but only 110 people working in the state insurance department (31st out of 56). Idaho and Utah regulate 2,089 and 2,038 insurers, respectively, with workforces of just 72 and 101. It’s not only in sparsely populated states where this mismatch exists. Wisconsin is home to the sixth highest number of insurers (2,024) and the 36th biggest office (124). Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois each oversee around 1,800 insurers with less than 300 personnel.
Those four states are also home to large numbers of domestic insurers, so the ratios are problematic when we focus on those entities as well. Wisconsin—where 327 insurance companies, including American Family, are domiciled—has the lowest ratio of personnel to domestic insurers at 0.38. The national average is 1.82. Pennsylvania (1.28) and Ohio (1.13), home to Progressive, have below average capacity. Meanwhile, Illinois, the primary regulator of Allstate and State Farm, is in the bottom 10 with just 0.8 department personnel per domestic insurer. The latter three states move up in the rankings when we look at personnel per P&C insurer, but all four of them fall again when the focus is on domestic P&C insurers.
Table 1
Map 2
Table 2 and Map 3 depict the relative capacity of state insurance departments in terms of personnel per billion dollars of premiums. By comparing the number of people working in each insurance office to the amount of premiums written (total and P&C) by admitted insurance companies operating there, we can see personnel per billion dollars of premiums.
Nationally, there’s an average of 3.47 personnel per billion dollars in total premiums and 13.83 personnel per billion dollars in P&C premiums. Unsurprisingly, for both categories, the top of the rankings are dominated by jurisdictions with lower populations, where premium volume tends to be lower.
Table 2
Map 3
The tables and maps above highlight state insurance office staffing in the aggregate. At the same time, it’s crucial to highlight the inadequate number of specific types of personnel. For example, 19 states did not employ a full-time P&C actuary in 2022. This has significant potential implications because without sufficient actuarial capacity, states may be less likely to identify emerging solvency risks or protect consumers from excessive rates.
Relative Capacity (Budgets)
It’s also instructive to compare annual state insurance department budgets to the size of each state’s insurance market. Let’s focus on the number of domestic insurers since those are the companies for which a commissioner is the main regulator, as well as premium volume.
As Table 3 shows, there’s often a mismatch between a state insurance office’s budgetary capacity and the number of domiciled companies it is primarily responsible for regulating. For example, Wisconsin ranks fifth in market size with 327 domestic insurers and 23rd in annual budget with $20.6 million. For its part, Pennsylvania ranks seventh in terms of the size of its domestic market (225 insurers) but 19th in terms of departmental resources ($35.7 million).
Table 3
Table 4 and Map 4 depict the relative size of each state insurance department’s budget, with annual expenditures expressed as a percentage of premium volume (total and P&C). By comparing state insurance office spending to the amount of premiums written by admitted companies operating there, we can see relative budgetary capacity.
On average, state insurance department budgets represent 0.06 percent of total premiums and 0.24 percent of P&C premiums.Some key states are near the bottom of the rankings in both categories, including Massachusetts, where Liberty Mutual is domiciled.
Table 4
Map 4
A note of caution: While certain state insurance departments appear to have staff and budgets adequate to the size of their admitted markets, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that some of those same states are home to a large number of captive insurers—a form of self-insurance that is outside the scope of this primer. In Vermont, for instance, 551 captive insurers are regulated by a small, sparsely funded office.
In general, the data visualized above raises questions about the failure to establish and enforce an accreditation standard for state insurance departments which would ensure that they are adequately funded and staffed.
Revolving Door Restrictions
Public Citizen has compiled a list of state-level revolving door restrictions. Of the 50 states, 29 have some form of “cooling-off” period that is applicable to departing insurance regulators. These laws are designed to prevent former public officials, including insurance commissioners, from lobbying their ex-colleagues for a specific amount of time after they leave office.
I assigned each state a numerical value corresponding to the relative strength of its revolving door restrictions (see Map 5). The 21 states lacking such laws received a “0.” Restrictions on lobbying contacts—i.e., statutes that prohibit ex-regulators from directly contacting their former agencies but allow them to join a lobbying firm or engage in “strategic consulting”—are not as strong as restrictions on lobbying activities more generally. The 13 states with one-year restrictions on lobbying contacts received a “1.” The four states with multi-year restrictions on lobbying contacts received a “2.” The six states with up to one-year restrictions on lobbying activities received a “3.” The six states with multi-year restrictions on lobbying activities received a “4.”
Map 5
Partisan Affiliations
State insurance commissioner is an elected position in just 12 of 56 jurisdictions: California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington. In the remaining 44 jurisdictions, insurance regulators are appointed—either directly by governors, by governor-appointed officials or commissions, or by other public bodies.
Commissioners’ partisan affiliations (see Map 6) can influence their regulatory approaches. For instance, each of the 10 state insurance regulators who called for the abolition of FIO following Donald Trump’s electoral victory are elected Republicans or were appointed by Republican governors. Nine of those officials signed a letter in December 2024 urging President-elect Trump’s budding DOGE offensive to eliminate the small Treasury office that was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Though North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread wasn’t a signatory, he also expressed support for such a move. About a month after the letter was published, the Biden administration’s FIO released data that made it possible for the Revolving Door Project and Public Citizen to map the extent of the nationwide home insurance crisis. Is that what those commissioners were afraid of?
The data collection process itself was carried out by FIO and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)—a private, quasi-governmental organization whose main function is to set standards for state regulation of insurance and which due to a decision-making structure that requires a supermajority vote of all commissioners for model laws and regulations, often waters down proposed standards that would protect consumers (thus favoring the insurance industry). In October 2022, FIO proposed a more robust collection of data from insurers that would gather detailed information on insurance market practices and exposures. Notably, the NAIC opposed that proposal and later announced its plan to pursue a separate effort focused on collecting a narrower set of information. In a December 2023 letter to President Biden’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), advocacy groups explained the problems with a “piecemeal, state-level approach” and urged OMB to approve FIO’s proposal, the scope of which had already been circumscribed by the Treasury Department since it was initially unveiled. Although OMB gave Treasury the greenlight to move forward with its own data call, FIO and the NAIC agreed in March 2024 to proceed with a single data collection process under the auspices of the NAIC.
Nevertheless, Godfread is one of eight insurance commissioners who refused to fully participate in the NAIC-FIO data call. Besides North Dakota, other recalcitrant commissioners came from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Montana, Texas, and Indiana—all of them elected Republicans or appointees of Republican governors. Throughout 2025, Godfread was president of the NAIC. Under Godfread’s leadership, the NAIC in March 2025 asked congressional leaders to shut down FIO, and he continued to beat the same drum in the months that followed.
Map 6
We built the maps and tables above using the same database on which our related resource, “Tracking State Insurance Commissioners,” is based.
Photo: National Association of Insurance Commissioners
- While the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) has categorized New York as a “prior approval” state, the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) has acknowledged that residential property insurance rates “are not subject to DFS’s prior approval but rather to the national standard of ‘file and use.'” According to New York Acting Superintendent of Financial Services Kaitlin Asrow, “Insurers typically wait for DFS’s approval of these rates before implementing them.” That may explain why FIO classified New York as a “prior approval” state. We have chosen to list New York as a “file-and-use” state, not a “prior approval” state. ↩︎