Hailstorms In The US Hit The Property Insurance Market Hard

Wildfires and hurricanes from recent years have impacted many homeowners’ and businesses’ ability to find affordable property insurance, but they’re not the only types of weather events that are contributing to a hardening property market.

Hailstorms rank as one of the more damaging weather events in the US with 5,382 major hailstorms occurring in 2019 and 4,610 hailstorms in 2018, the latter of which resulted in $810 million in property and crop damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

It’s no surprise then that the property insurance market is finally reacting to this icy threat.

“The assumption of risk from property carriers has proven unsustainable due to years of deteriorating property rates and terms and conditions, and the lowering of deductibles — just general soft market issues,” said Andy Hendrix, SVP of US property at Colony Specialty, a part of Argo Group. “The other concern that we have as property carriers is roof maintenance from both commercial and personal lines risks that haven’t really been consistent.”

He added that there’s been a lot of neglect of older or poorly maintained roofs that have caused fairly large losses following minor hail events, which properly maintained roofs would have helped to mitigate.