Is climate change affecting your car insurance rates?

After wreaking havoc on the homeowners' insurance market in the United States and beyond in recent years, climate change is coming for your car insurance premium.

[...]

"Hail storms, hurricanes, floods, winter storms - all of them can cause widespread vehicle damage and accidents," Brannon told Context.

"Insurers are always dealing with claims, but it's a lot of claims that are unusually expensive all at once, so they present a lot of risk to insurers - more so than the day-to-day sort of losses they face from collisions," he said.

[...]

The deadly Los Angeles County fires in January destroyed as many as 6,300 vehicles, according to estimates, while in 2024, Florida hurricanes led to more than 100,000 auto insurance claims, according to the Insurify report.

Hail, which is prevalent in the Midwest, accounts for about 12% of comprehensive car insurance claims, the report found.

[...]

Extreme weather events, made more frequent and intense by climate change, have been wreaking havoc on homeowners insurance policies in recent years, though overall insurance markets appear to have stabilised somewhat this year.

Still, since 2019 average home insurance premiums have increased by more than 40%, according to a report released on July 30 by the Insurance Fairness Project, a research and advocacy group.

[...]