Dwelling policies will increase 8% starting in November. (File photo)
Republican Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey (Photo: NCDOI)
Late Thursday afternoon, Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey announced that he has negotiated an average, statewide 8% dwelling rate increase for North Carolina. The increase is 42.6 percentage points lower than the 50.6% increase requested by the N.C. Rate Bureau. The new rate will take effect Nov. 1.
The settlement with North Carolina’s insurance companies will save state consumers more than $151.7 million per year, Causey said in a press release. A July 22 hearing about the rate increase has been canceled.
“I’m also glad that we were able to avert a potentially lengthy and costly hearing on this case,” Causey said. “Our top-notch legal, actuarial and property and casualty experts at the Department worked diligently to help protect the consumers’ pocketbooks by limiting this increase to 8%.”
Dwelling policies are primarily offered to non-owner occupied properties of no more than four units. That includes rental properties, investment properties and other properties that are not property owners’ primary residence.
A negotiated rate, but no public hearing
Causey’s opponent in the North Carolina insurance commissioner’s race, state Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg, went on the attack, criticizing the Republican incumbent for raising insurance rates 16 times without holding public hearings and for dropping the news about the recent rate hike while North Carolinians and the rest of the nation focused on former President Donald Trump’s felony convictions for falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg (Photo: NCGA)
“Commissioner Causey dropped this news in a press release at 4:58pm on the night of Donald Trump’s conviction in an attempt to obfuscate his efforts to raise rates on North Carolinians,” Marcus said.
Marcus predicted the hearing would be canceled and the rate hike in a March press release.
“Commissioner Causey has a longstanding pattern of promising hearings on property insurance rate increases and then settling privately before the hearings can occur. . . North Carolina consumers beware: ‘Rate Hike Mike’ Causey is preparing to raise your insurance rates again,” she said.
Marcus noted that the dwelling rate increase was the fourth under Causey’s leadership, including a 9.9% increase two years ago, a 7.6% increase in 2020 and a 4.8% increase in 2018. Meanwhile, Causey’s predecessor raised dwelling rates only once throughout his eight years in office, she said.
“Mike Causey’s idea of ‘insurance’ is ensuring his friends in the industry get richer,” Marcus said. Causey has collected more than $250,000 from the insurance industry as of his most recent campaign finance report. “Yesterday’s sneaky rate hike is a blatant attempt to deceive the hardworking families and businesses of North Carolina whose wallets are already getting squeezed.”
The post Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey approves average 8% dwelling rate increase appeared first on NC Newsline.