Texas Windstorm Insurance Association votes to seek rate hike

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association at a meeting Tuesday voted to seek a rate increase of 10% for 2025 residential and commercial policies, which could cost some coastal property owners hundreds of dollars more each year. After several hours of occasionally heated public testimony, TWIA’s board voted 6-3 in favor of the increase. The proposal next goes to the Texas Department of Insurance, where if approved the rate hike would be expected to take effect in January. The emotionally charged meeting in Galveston illustrated the distress many coastal Texas property owners are experiencing as extreme weather events reshape the insurance landscape. Opponents of the rate increase emphasized how the change would strain their budgets.

One retiree said that with windstorm insurance, flood insurance, homeowners insurance and property insurance, he pays more than $600 a month — on a fixed income — to live in a house he owns outright. On TWIA’s average residential premium of $2,300 a year, the rate hike would add $230. “We cannot afford this,” said a woman who explained that she and her husband are retired. “I’m going to use the heavenly vernacular of hell: Oh, hell no.” TWIA, a not-for-profit insurance association, was created by the Texas Legislature in 1971 to provide wind and hail insurance in Texas’s 14 coastal counties and a corner of Harris County. As of March, there were about 250,000 TWIA policies in force in coastal Texas, a 37% increase from 2020. The association also administers the Texas Fair Plan Association, which provides property insurance to Texas homeowners who have been denied by at least two other companies. “The impact on many of our residents will cause a disaster,” said Ryan Skrobarczyk, director of intergovernmental affairs for Corpus Christi. “Many of our residents are already stretched thin, struggling to balance essential needs with the inflationary cost of living.”