South Carolina consumers feel the bite of high property insurance rates
When it comes to property insurance, homeowners face a daunting set of hurdles:
Lawmakers enacted laws to force regulators to all-but-rubber stamp rate increases below 7 percent a year.
At the same time, they’ve eviscerated the budgets of government watchdog agencies charged with challenging rates.
And unlike other states, South Carolina’s Department of Insurance doesn’t offer the public data in any useful form to make it easier to find deals or find out about rate increases.
Meanwhile, insurance companies have jacked up rates along the coast or dropped homeowners from their rolls altogether.
“The playing field level for consumers? Definitely not in South Carolina,” said Robert Hunter, a former insurance commissioner in Texas now with the Consumer Federation of America. “You have very weak regulation in South Carolina.”
Read more in tomorrow’s editions of The Post and Courier. To see interactive maps, visit the Storm of Money web page on postandcourier.com
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