Published: March 14, 2025
For years homeowners’ insurance was just there. It was a safety net in the background, ready to catch someone when disaster struck.
But now, that net is fraying, and homeowners are scrambling to understand why coverage is becoming so expensive — or in some areas, nearly impossible to obtain.
Homeowners across the country — especially in wildfire-prone states like California — are seeing their premiums skyrocket, their policies canceled, or, in some cases, they are left without any options at all. Insurers too are feeling the pressure. For years, they relied on traditional risk models to calculate premiums, issue policies, and assume predictable loss patterns. But the landscape is changing. Rising claims, extreme weather events, and economic pressures are pushing the industry to a breaking point.
At the center of this crisis is a fundamental question: how does the industry adapt to a world with accelerating natural hazard risk? On this episode of Core Conversations, host Maiclaire Bolton Smith sits down with Robert Feldman, co-founder of Wows Insurance, to talk about this issue and what can be done to address this ongoing crisis.