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Re:America in flames by kbenson on Friday September 11, 2015 @12:04PM (#10204451)
I was actually thinking this as well. Higher insurance premiums for homes that are not rated to far exceed what should in practice be possible to experience in a hurricane or fire should be the norm. Actually, my guess is this is coming, as soon as the actuarial tables adjust to the new climate reality (barring political meddling to suppress normal market forces).

As for floods... I dunno, maybe insurance requiring some portion of the house that is higher than the flood plain and that the house is not in danger of becoming unmoored for any sort of sane rates. I imagine that would make housing in places way under the flood plane or that face both floods and hurricanes expensive to build in, which is the point.

Re:America in flames by spaceactuary on Friday September 11, 2015 @12:55PM (#10204753)
"Actuarial tables" are really only used to price life insurance.

Property/Casualty insurance (auto, home, work comp, etc.) are priced by analyzing recent loss experience, then trending loss costs forward (as medical costs & replacement costs go up over time).

Hazards that are infrequent and spatially-correlated (hurricane, tornado/hail, fire) are often priced by using simulations, which take into account the nature of the event, engineering simulations, and insurance policy terms.

Flood insurance is incredibly politicized, as it's handled at the federal level. Floods are typically considered an "uninsurable event" given that if you live in a flood plan, there's a high likelihood that you'll have a loss due to flood--less of an "if" than a "when".

Flood insurance is sold & claims are handled by insurance companies, but it is effectively reinsured 100% by the federal government. Actuarial studies have show the premiums to be highly inadequate, but there has been legislation that aims to reduce that inadequacy.

Re:America in flames by kbenson on Friday September 11, 2015 @01:28PM (#10204972)
What I suspected, and what you hint at, is that the insurance market isn't all that efficient in some areas. In some cases because there's limited information, in which case the only way to increase market efficiency is to do more research (which is so open ended it's impossible to know when you're doing "enough"), or to pad the results to account for errors. In other cases it's because there's been too much government interference, or the interference has had unintended side effects (I believe in market interference, I just believe it should almost always be to increase efficiency, where all to often our efforts are to subsidize a segment and that has too many follow-on consequences). Requiring insurance in specific areas might help this.