Insurance Legislation and Regulation to Watch in 2024

Senior Policy Advisor Beth Vecchioli spoke with Law360 about the top developments in the insurance industry to watch this year. She commented on issues surrounding the property insurance market and climate risk as major providers like Allstate, Farmers and State Farm have announced they will no longer offer homeowners insurance in California because of increasing costs with more natural disasters. She explained that Florida has been seeking creative solutions to affordability problems; for example, some insurers now offer a deductible reimbursement policy that pays the property insurance policy deductible so that homeowners can make repairs under that policy.

"Even if you have like a 20 percent deductible, which is a pretty high deductible," she said. "A lot of people can't afford that [kind of deductible], but with this second policy, sometimes it makes it more affordable."

Another issue to watch in 2024 is data privacy. Multiple states passed privacy legislation in 2023, and still more introduced bills that could be enacted in the next year. Ms. Vecchioli shared insights on the implications of these laws for insurers and policyholders.

"We've seen many states have already adopted data privacy legislation, and this is important because your insurance company holds a lot of either health insurance information on you, financial information or just personal information," she said. "And so the data privacy laws are aimed at trying to protect that information from getting out into the general public or in some bad person's hands."

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