NAMIC’s Alldredge Advocates for Reducing Risks at HUD Insurance Summit

Neil Alldredge, president and CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, spoke on a panel today at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2024 Insurance Summit. The event brought together speakers from the White House, consumer groups, state and federal agencies, the private sector, and others to discuss challenges facing the U.S. property insurance market, its impact on affordable housing, and potential solutions.

Alldredge took part in a fireside chat on the future of the U.S. property insurance market moderated by New York Times reporter Emily Flitter, along with fellow panelists Shaun Donovan, president and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, Jonathan T.M. Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity, and Alan McClain, the Arkansas Insurance Commissioner. Alldredge offered the insurance industry’s perspective on the challenges facing the property insurance market, their root causes, and potential solutions.

“We have entered a new era of risk in the past few years where changing weather patterns, inflation and economic uncertainty, legal system abuse, and rising reinsurance costs have driven up insurance prices,” he said. “At the same time, more people are moving into high-risk areas, so extreme weather events are damaging more properties.”

“Any discussion of property insurance and its impact on affordable housing must first consider that insurance rates reflect risk. Efforts to artificially force rates down will only mask the real-world risks facing property owners and incentivize them to locate in harm’s way,” Alldredge continued.

Solutions to address the increasing costs of property insurance must start by reducing risks, according to Alldredge.

“Insurance pricing is a symptom of the problems facing the housing market,” he said. “NAMIC believes that reducing risk through better land use policies, modern building codes, and increased funding for mitigation projects makes our communities safer from extreme weather and housing more affordable for everyone.”

“In seeking solutions, the suggestion that collecting national data from insurers would allow us to draw conclusions about the market is misguided,” Alldredge concluded. “One of the reasons that the state-based system of insurance regulation works so well is that risk varies by geographic location. Tailoring solutions to local challenges, though difficult and complex, is the only way to meaningfully reduce risk in a way that broadly benefits consumers.”