I haven’t seen the tide turn just yet, but things have started to steady—and the insurance market is always very competitive.
I don’t see it on the property side, rebuilding costs remain a concern, and extreme weather events aren’t letting up. We’re going to feel the impact of the California fires, which are projected to exceed $250 billion in damages—more than double the cost of Hurricanes Harvey and Katrina, which each topped out at $125 billion. That’s staggering. For perspective, Lloyd’s of London’s total annual premium intake is £55 billion.
Insurance companies had already begun pulling out of California due to wildfire risk. Major players like Travelers, State Farm, Nationwide, Farmers, and Allstate have stopped writing new policies in the state—and some are even canceling long-time clients. I heard of this from friends in LA as early as September, well before the latest major fire event started. We’ve seen our own share of floods, fires and tornados, all of a sudden.
As for car insurance, the spike in premiums was largely driven by a sudden and massive wave of auto thefts. Brand-new vehicles were being stolen nightly from driveways across the country. This trend lasted more than two years before the government responded with the National Action Plan on Combating Auto Theft in September 2024.
The rate hikes made sense when you look at the scale of losses—not only were thousands of vehicles stolen, but inflation pushed up the cost to replace them by tens of thousands more than they cost the year before. And while nobody sheds tears for insurance companies, but the math on those claims was brutal.
By March 2023, Aviva was the first insurer I saw launch the TAG Anti-Theft Initiative and by that summer, nearly every major provider had followed suit. A TAG is essentially a vehicle-specific GPS tracker—think Airtag, but hardwired—and they claim a 100% recovery success rate. I’m curious about how they define “success,” but by all accounts, it’s been extremely effective.
We don’t know much about TAG or its origins, but the fact that insurers can use its installation to impact your premium makes me suspect there’s some level of government involvement. The TAG system costs $400 with no subscription fees, and most insurance companies are subsidizing the cost. It’s also privacy-conscious—TAG doesn’t track your speed or driving habits, just your car’s location if it gets stolen.
Over the past two years, TAGs have been installed in most high-risk vehicles—CRVs, RAV4s, RX350s, F-150s, RAM 1500s, and so on—and it seems to be working. It was a relatively swift industry response, and now that the 2025 models are hitting the roads, I’m seeing slightly lower premiums compared to the 2024s. Fewer vehicles now require a TAG, which suggests that manufacturers may finally be securing their vehicles better at the source.
According to the Ottawa Police, auto thefts were down 40% at the start of 2025 compared to the previous year—and that doesn’t account for the number of recovered vehicles. While I don’t expect repair costs to drop anytime soon (given ongoing labor and parts inflation), if we can significantly cut down theft, we may finally see insurance premiums begin to slide back down.
- #CarInsurance
- #AutoTheft
- #InsuranceRates
- #ExtremeWeather
- #CaliforniaWildfires
- #VehicleSecurity
- #TAGAntiTheft