Guest Commentary written by

Jane Kim

Jane Kim is a civil rights attorney, consumer advocate and a former San Francisco Supervisor

With the first anniversary of the devastating Southern California wildfires approaching, CalMatters asked candidates for the 2026 state Insurance Commissioner race to share thoughts on what the state can do to help victims and stabilize insurers. This is the seventh response. Read the other candidate responses here, here, here, here, here and here.

California’s insurance system is failing. Premiums are too high. Insurance companies are cancelling coverage or fleeing the state. Even if you have insurance, these companies fight your claims every step of the way, assigning and re-assigning multiple adjusters to slow down repairs and the rebuild. 

The state does a good job of regulating consumers: We require Californians to have insurance to drive to work, open a small business or get a mortgage to buy a home. That’s how insurance ends up playing an outsized role in who gets to build wealth in our state.

For this reason, insurance must be affordable and accessible to all. Otherwise we are cutting Californians out of the economy.

We need to re-imagine and redesign insurance to work for all of us. And this means taking on the $3.3 trillion industry, which has been posting blockbuster profits for shareholders and CEOs. In fact, CEO’s at the 10 largest insurance companies raked in $391 million over the last three years.

Modern insurance companies make money by investing premiums in the stock and bond market. When insurance companies are financial firms first and protection systems second, the incentives are clear: deny or delay claims, erode coverage through fine print, penalize people for filing claims, and flee communities once the math stops favoring astronomical profit gains.

California has strong consumer protections put in place by advocates and voters. But these regulations alone don’t help when insurers opt out — and anyone with a home, car or business cannot.

I’m running for Insurance Commissioner to propose big ideas to address this private market failure.

We need Natural Disaster Insurance for All. This universal, affordable disaster insurance program would also invest in statewide climate resiliency and infrastructure. A universal system — which currently exists in countries like New Zealand and France — stabilizes coverage, prevents mass cancellations and creates a pool large enough to handle natural disasters. It also allows California to invest directly in mitigation and resilience — the kind of long-term risk reduction private insurers are not mandated or incentivized to invest in. And it removes the coverage responsibility insurers say is driving them from California, stabilizing a market in crisis. 

We also must do more to cap CEO pay and excessive insurance profits. Californians are being asked to accept higher premiums and worse coverage while insurance executives take home tens of millions of dollars and companies use our premiums as an investment engine. When claims are denied or delayed, that isn’t a glitch – it’s a business strategy. We can do a far better job reining in profiteering and price gouging, and it is essential to restoring trust and affordability.

Some will say these ideas are too ambitious. But the truth is, the current system is too expensive and does not protect Californians and our most valued assets: our homes, our cars, our businesses and our health.