Video by Sam Black and Sydney Guthrie

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Insurance companies claim higher prices are justified by higher risks, but we found they are keeping more of our premium dollars than ever. And last year, they made record profits.

TRANSCRIPT

JASON MINOTT, HOMEOWNER: Looking at the bill. I was like, ‘Whoa.’ I was dumbfounded. And I’m just thinking, why is it so expensive? What can we do?

SAM BLACK, MORE PERFECT UNION: Since 2020, the cost of insurance for your car or your home has shot up, more than twice as much as inflation.

NEWS CLIP: As wildfire risk rises, so do homeowner insurance rates. It’s part of an overall pattern of increasing rates among extreme weather events. The trend is less coverage for more money.

BLACK: The usual explanation is that we live in a more dangerous world, so all of us have to pay for increased risks. But that doesn’t explain this: Last year, the insurance industry made record profits.

It made me wonder: Are the higher insurance prices we’re paying really necessary?

JANE KIM, CANDIDATE FOR CALIFORNIA’S INSURANCE COMMISSIONER: There’s this huge profit margin.

BRIAN SHEARER, FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF POLICY PLANNING AT THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU: They’re basically price gouging the climate crisis.

BLACK: I spoke to policyholders and insurance experts, and found another story: Of billion-dollar companies that figured out how to exploit our legitimate fears, while increasingly failing to protect us.

JAMES FANNIN, CHURCH BISHOP OF CHRISTIAN WORSHIP CENTER: We, in good faith, do what we do, expecting the system to work. Does anybody care about us?

BLACK: With Americans now spending a record $1 trillion a year to pay for property and casualty insurance, where is all that money going? And how can we fix this system so that we can get insurance that actually works, at a cost we can afford?

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