Comment by iandanforth
1 day ago
"Correctly" is doing a lot of work here. Some readers might miss that this is double edged. Insurance is a mandated product. You don't have a choice if you want a mortgage, or want to run a business. So while it is true that the sustainable price for insurance in many areas is higher than what current regulations allow, let's not forget what happens in an unregulated insurance market; price gouging.
If the regulators have defined 'price gouging' as a price substantially below the break even mark, literally any profitable insurance product is implicitly believed by them to be price gouging. The US does a weird thing where "insurance" no longer means pooling risk but some sort of transfer payment welfare system. If they're going to define "price gouging" as profitable activity it is hard to see how the economy is going to function.
Allowing insurers to make a profit and run a business without interference is going to be cheaper - and in most instances better - than whatever the politicians are trying to build here. If you get rid of all the mandatory-this and price-gouging-thats then to stay in business insurers have sell products that people want to buy at a competitive yet sustainable price. It works for food, it'd work here too.
The math of insurance suggests that, if it needs to be widely carried (either due to things like mortgage requirements, or the simple realization most people don't have enough resources to absorb a major catastrophe themselves), the most economical way to go is to have a single risk pool that's as broad and diverse as possible, so it can swallow a large clustered crisis more easily. Yes, this is a bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I always found it funny when insurance marketing talks about "personalized rates", when the goal is to DE-PERSONALIZE the risk. If you have 10,000 customers in Los Angeles, and 5 million elsewhere, you can either isolate the LA customers and charge them the "real" price of the risk, which will be unviable as a business and probably politically touchy too, or you can include them in the broad pool, and the people with a full-cinderblock home in a non-flammable state pay $20 more a year so the entire endeavour can work.
The concept probably works better if you have some concept of social cohesion to lean on-- you might not get the best possible outcome personally, but the system itself is more robust for everyone.
What if Paul built his house somewhere less flammable? I see options here where Peter doesn't need to be robbed, he could pay a fair rate and Paul could make less risky decisions.
If one pool of people are taking a bad deal vs the market rate when buying insurance then it isn't really insurance any more. It is a transfer payment a.k.a. welfare. Which is cool and all in the sense that welfare is a social tool that exists. But calling it 'insurance' is needlessly polluting the language. If people expect to hoover money off others then they should be charged more until the expected return of everyone in the insured pool is equal. If the payouts are going to be held equal in the event of a disaster then that means the price of insurance has to vary depending on the risk profile of the customers.
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> If you have 10,000 customers in Los Angeles, and 5 million elsewhere, you can either isolate the LA customers and charge them the "real" price
That's the only way.
> which will be unviable as a business and probably politically touchy too
Why would it be? If you live in Los Angeles - doesn't mean you don't need insurance (even if it several times the cost of insurance in the safer areas).
> or you can include them in the broad pool
No, you can't. Your competitor who doesn't do this will offer cheaper insurance - because they doesn't distribute high risk of small group to everybody else.
> the people with a full-cinderblock home in a non-flammable state pay $20 more a year so the entire endeavour can work.
Why would they do that? 20 bucks is 20 bucks.
> The concept probably works better if you have some concept of social cohesion to lean on
You mean if you with totalitarian governance deprive people of the ability to choose? Yeah, that could work. I mean, that's how the gulags were justified.
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Except if insurance company A does that, insurance company B will call the full-cinderblock home and say "hey, we can save you $20".
If it's a product you actually want everyone to carry (like health insurance) it should probably be the government offering it.
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you can either isolate the LA customers and charge them the "real" price of the risk, which will be unviable as a business
NOT lining up the premium with the actual risk is what's non-viable.
> or you can include them in the broad pool, and the people with a full-cinderblock home in a non-flammable state pay $20 more a year so the entire endeavour can work
And you immediately start loosing customers to insurers that either did the former or left LA alltogether. This changes $20 surcharge into $25 surcharge, causing more customers to leave, causing surcharge to increase and so on.
> I always found it funny when insurance marketing talks about "personalized rates", when the goal is to DE-PERSONALIZE the risk.
Actuarial science is not often associated with “fun” but they have been partying for centuries.
“In 1662, a London draper named John Graunt showed that there were predictable patterns of longevity and death in a defined group, or cohort, of people, despite the uncertainty about the future longevity or mortality of any one individual. This study became the basis for the original life table. Combining this idea with that of compound interest and annuity valuation, it became possible to set up an insurance scheme to provide life insurance or pensions for a group of people, and to calculate with some degree of accuracy each member's necessary contributions to a common fund, assuming a fixed rate of interest.”
> you can either isolate the LA customers and charge them the "real" price of the risk […] or you can include them in the broad pool
Maybe you don’t understand that the insurance business is based on including everyone in one pool (so it can swallow a large clustered crisis more easily) AND charge them (more than) the real price of the risk.
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This completely ignores incentives. If insurance isn't allowed to charge people more who live in fireprone or floodprone areas, more people will live in such areas, and overall society will have to spend more money rebuilding when disasters inevitably hit those areas. Personalised insurance pricing would allow insurers to charge much more to people living in such areas, which incentivises people not to live there. It's also a moral issue: if everyone pays the same rate, then people who did the right thing and chose to live in an area that wasn't fire or flood prone are subsidising people who did the risky thing.
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By eliminating personalization you’re doing the same thing - removing price as a signal.
It’s good when insurers personalize! Install screens to prevents embers from entering roof vents? Great. You should get a discount!
It’s a win-win. Consumers are incentivized to take measures to reduce risk.
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This sounds like a very US-centric view and id strongly disagree that only the profit motive keeps economies and people going.
You almost said it yourself, "The US does a weird thing where insurance no longer means pooling risk". Why? Is it the profit motive or gov. regulation?
My answer: The selective approach of insurance companies mirrors the profit seeking lack of solidarity, which is ultimately incompatible with the risk pooling purpose, insurance companies are justified with.
Free markets have down sides and failure conditions too and only principled gov. regulation can fix it.
> This sounds like a very US-centric view
> My answer: The selective approach of insurance companies mirrors the profit seeking lack of solidarity, which is ultimately incompatible with the risk pooling purpose
What’s the non-US-centric view? Lloyd's of London is older than the US.
profit motive does keep the economy going. if you do not believe that youre like a flat earther.
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> unregulated insurance market; price gouging.
with sufficient competition, it is impossible to price gouge.
So if there is supposed price gouging, then there must be insufficient competition. Therefore, the source of the lack of competition would need to be removed (ostensibly, by gov't - such as increasing business loans so that new insurance companies can be started).
Or, you need to be pragmatic, realize that you're not gods and won't create a perfect system that can't be exploited, and instead tackle the issue from multiple angles while revising your approach as the exploiters attack.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of good enough.
What are you trying to say here?
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"good enough" assumes a lot about the rules of the game here. Imagine, the game is: "heads I win, tails you lose" and then read your comment.
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Or, the market lets the gods do their work, rather than the government acting like one.
—esoteric capitalism
I mean, there's sometimes simply not enough capital available to support the creation of further competition in a sector. And government subsidies in the form of cheap business loans are sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul. You're simply allocating capital from one sector (the one being taxed) to another
For what it’s worth, you can get a house with no insurance or mortgage. They tend to be cheap. I had an uninsured thatched cottage for a while, it was 68k
You can have a mortgage with no insurance (after purchase day) here in New Zealand. The bank won’t like it, but also won’t know.
You are right that you can get away with it in NZ.
For total loss then bankruptcy might save you money (assuming you have no other assets or kiwisaver; since you still owe the debt).
But part of the contract with the bank is allowing the bank and insurance company to verify/update.
If you cancel your insurance, the insurance company is incentivised to tell the bank since you will probably sign up for insurance again when told to by the bank. I don't believe the banks or insurance have push updates. I would guess banks batch check if insurance is still live annually?
I live in Christchurch and I believe insurance is valuable risk management - plenty of people gambled and lost with Earthquakes. That said: I own an as-is house because I bought a 3 bedroom on 800m2 for $190000 (cheap because you can't get a mortgage for it because it is uninsurable due to subsidence - I only paid land price).
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Banks in Australia were the same, but some are now starting to demand proof of insurance yearly to counter that loophole.
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You can do that in the US too. As well the banks won't like it, so what they'll do is protect their assets with force-placed insurance that you pay a hefty premium for.
A quick google suggests a similar situation in that there's no legal mandate but most lenders in NZ require insurance.
What did you do for liability insurance?
For the first year I had a policy similar to what farmers use for ag land, then it got cancelled and I was uninsured, which wasn’t ideal.
I sold the house after a while, it was an interesting experiment in cheap living but ultimately it wasn’t great.
Annoyingly I couldn’t insure it because it was thatched, and I couldn’t change the roof because of heritage. The Irish government has screwed over thatch owners brutally.
Price gouging isn't actually what we're seeing in the most disaster prone areas. Insurance companies aren't charging open ended prices, they're simply exiting the market. Florida for example.
I believe Florida market exits had more to do with litigation-friendliness than premium caps or disaster risks. E.g.,
> In 2020, 79 percent of homeowners insurance lawsuits nationwide were in Florida—even as the state accounted for only 9 percent of the U.S. homeowners insurance claims, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.
There were some recent reforms in response (HB 837, 2023; SB 2-A, 2022).
Ah, fair point
They're exiting the market because the states have limits on how premiums can increase y/y. The risk modeling (which is turning out to be right) says premiums are fractional of what they should be. So unable to raise premiums, the companies just leave.
Rock, meet hard place.
The big risk that we need regulation for is not that insurance charges too much, but too little. There will always be the temptation to charge less than the other guy, get lots of customers and hope nothing really bad happens.
This is a great callout, although I suspect the two main things insurers need but can't get today, due to regulations:
1 can accommodate for 2, but then its basically insurer charging the actual price of the home, year one. Maybe they can work out a deal though, like you get the money back if it doesn't burn down. (Mostly parroting things I've heard that seems to make sense).
P&C insurance is a pretty competitive industry, and there are plenty of mutual insurance companies in the P&C business that don't have a price gouging incentive. Most of the regulations that are about reducing counterparty risk for the insured are probably necessary, but price controls are not, and generally, they only distort the market.
Can you define “price gouging”?
Insurance (at least the kind we are talking about) is only mandatory if you have loans, and even then it is not 100% mandated. We do need insurance regulations, but price caps limit what things actually make sense to cover. To put it another way, you are free to buy land in a risky area if you want, but nobody has to insure it or loan you money for it. If you find someone who will loan you the money if you can get insurance, then you can't get insurance, that sucks for you but nobody owes it to you to hand over money on a losing investment. These requirements can be abused, but there really isn't much evidence of insurers, lenders, and investors colluding to rip people off.