BIGiOK Legislative Newsletter

Welcome to this special edition of our Legislative Newsletter.  I’ve been busy the past couple of weeks working with our legislators as they develop their Interim Studies on the high cost of Homeowners Insurance.  Representative Andy Fugate and Senator Julia Kirt both have held Interim Studies to fully understand the effect of the increased costs and the reasons why.  I’ve included links to the studies so one can watch in it’s entirety.  We appreciate Rep Fugate and Senator Kirt’s openness to discussing the industry as a whole with us from an agent’s perspective.  We also want to thank many of our own BigIOK members including Representative Mark Tedford, Representative Stacy Jo Adams, Representative Forrest Bennet and Representative Jason Blair.  We also appreciate Senator Aaron Reinhardt  as he represents our issues on the Senate side.

One of our own BigIOK members, Jeff Berrong (Berrong Insurance) was able to speak at Representative Fugate’s Study and has followed up with his thoughts:

• “I feel like everyone who is reporting on the topic of rising homeowners insurance costs is not factoring in just how much of the higher cost is coming from increased home valuations versus rate increases.  As you can see from my Excel spreadsheet, in most cases a VERY large portion of the increased cost can be attributed to the increase in the Coverage A limit, which is the value of the home itself.  No question there have certainly been large rate increases as well, but the terms are not being used very precisely by reporters and I don’t think people are understanding that they are now paying to insure much more expensive houses than they were a few years back.  There’s the rising premium basis (the replacement cost value of the house) and the rising rates, just an important distinction in my opinion that is not being properly factored into this overall discussion, which is why I brought it up in the study.
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• Another thing to mention as well is that the Lending Tree study that Oklahoma Watch was using serves to artificially increase the gap between Oklahoma and the other states with the highest homeowners premiums.  Storm damage statistics do not care what the average household income in a state is, so running that comparison doesn’t really get us anywhere as far as determining if there is a problem, as it’s a variable that doesn’t tell us anything about the insurance market.  With Oklahoma being in the bottom ten states in terms of household income, it means everything is a higher percentage of our incomes!  In absolute average premiums, Oklahoma is certainly one of the states with the highest homeowners premium, but different studies rank us in other top spots, but not #1, and it’s hard to figure out for sure how these different studies are getting their premium numbers.  For instance, this link to the current comparison from Bankrate, Home Insurance Rates by State for 2025 | Bankrate, puts Oklahoma at the 4th highest.  Regardless, there is no question we are on the high end, but there are real reasons for this!
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• The other important point to make is that if you look at that Lending Tree study, it can also be seen that in the past year, Oklahoma’s average insurance cost (by Lending Tree’s calculation) went up 8.6% compared to increases of 13.2% in Kansas and a whopping 22% in Nebraska.  Those states’ overall average premium is still less than Oklahoma, but they’re not that far off, and will catch up rapidly if they have another year or two of that type of premium increase.”

Here are the links to the studies from last week.  I would love to hear what you think!

• CLICKABLE LINKS
• House Interim Study Recording (September 30 – House Insurance)
• By Representative Andy Fugate

• Senate Interim Study Recording (October 7 – Business and Insurance)
• By Senator Julia Kirt

Senate Interim Study Recording: https://sg001-harmony.sliq.net/00282/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20251008/-1/79793

COPY AND PASTE LINKS

House Interim Study Recording: https://sg001-harmony.sliq.net/00283/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20251008/-1/55403