In November, Californians will vote for \u201cthe second-hardest job in the state behind the governor.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s according to someone who has held the job twice: John Garamendi, who was the state\u2019s first elected insurance commissioner in the 1990s and served again in the early 2000s. Garamendi, now a U.S. congressman, said the commissioner job is \u201ccomplex, hard, detailed work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no other task in any office in the state of California, except the governor, that has such significant power and the necessity to use the power to regulate the industry,\u201d Garamendi said.<\/p>\n
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is nearing the end of his second four-year term. In the past seven years, California experienced the biggest and most destructive wildfires in its history, which were a factor in insurance companies canceling homeowner policies or refusing to write new ones. With the insurance market out of whack, Lara last year put in place new regulations that include provisions insurers have long sought. Availability in the state is beginning to improve, though the commissioner said recently that he expects the recovery to take a few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The next insurance commissioner will have to balance availability with affordability. Premiums are rising. Many survivors of last year\u2019s Los Angeles County fires are struggling<\/a> to rebuild; they have sued insurance companies; and they have called for Lara to step down<\/a> because they don\u2019t think he has done enough to hold insurers accountable for delaying or denying their claims. Some insurers are still canceling policies. Many homeowners are continuing to turn to the last-resort FAIR Plan, which has seen a 146% increase in the number of policies since 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAffordability is only one piece of the very complicated puzzle,\u201d said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. She said the insurance business is more complicated today partly because of new technology and participants in the market, such as third-party administrators for insurers and non-admitted carriers, which among other things are not subject to rate reviews by the Insurance Department.<\/p>\n If all that doesn\u2019t sound like enough responsibility, California\u2019s insurance commissioner also regulates auto, health, pet, ride-hailing and life insurance, as well as workers\u2019 compensation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among the candidates who have thrown their hats into the ring are state Sen. Ben Allen and former state Sen. Steven Bradford, former San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Jane Kim and Patrick Wolff, a financial analyst with experience in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n New rules and fire aftermath\u00a0<\/p>\n Lara recently told the state Assembly Insurance Committee<\/a> that the new regulations he put in place last year are showing signs of working \u2014 that insurers are writing policies in California again.<\/p>\n Those regulations include speeding up reviews and approvals of insurers\u2019 requests to raise rates, and allowing them to factor in reinsurance costs and catastrophe models when setting rates in exchange for writing a certain percentage of policies in areas with high wildfire risk. Insurance companies including Mercury, CSAA and USAA have requested higher rates under the new rules and have received them, Lara told the committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n He credited the rules<\/a> with the availability improvements the department has seen so far, despite the deadly, multibillion-dollar disasters that were the L.A.-area fires.<\/p>\n \u201cThe market stabilized at a moment when it could have collapsed,\u201d he told the committee last month, referring to the fires as the \u201cevent that reshaped everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Lara told the committee that he expects his so-called sustainable insurance strategy \u2014 and the recovery from the fires \u2014 to take three to five years, and that California is already a year into that timeline.\u00a0<\/p>\n Policyholders have also complained about delays and denials of claims with their insurers, prompting the insurance department to investigate market leader State Farm<\/a>, as well as the FAIR Plan, over their handling of claims. Lara has backed new legislation<\/a> and policies to address some of the problems fire survivors have experienced, including lack of smoke-damage standards<\/a> and underinsurance.<\/p>\n So the next commissioner will have to handle the continuing aftermath of the fires, and either work with or modify the regulations Lara put into place.<\/p>\n \u2018Brutal\u2019 balancing act<\/p>\n That will require engaging with competing interests: insurance companies, lawmakers, consumers and consumer groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n Early in his tenure, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported<\/a> that Lara accepted donations from the insurance industry despite promising not to; he apologized<\/a> and returned those donations. Since then, he has been accused of continued coziness with the industry and criticized for his overseas<\/a> travel<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Former insurance commissioner Dave Jones, a Lara critic, said the next insurance commissioner needs to have \u201cintegrity\u201d and \u201ca seriousness of purpose.\u201d Both Jones and Garamendi told CalMatters the commissioner must protect consumers while ensuring a viable insurance market, which almost everybody needs \u2013 whether they\u2019re current homeowners, renters, business owners or property owners, as well as those who need insurance to buy a property.<\/p>\n Lara has often defended himself by saying he needs to communicate with the insurance industry that he regulates, and has criticized his predecessors as \u201carmchair insurance commissioners<\/a>.\u201d He was not available for an interview, according to department spokesperson Gabriel Sanchez, who did not want to respond to the commissioner\u2019s critics for this story.<\/p>\n Joel Laucher worked for the insurance department for more than three decades, focusing on insurers\u2019 conduct \u2014 including briefly under Lara. He said the incoming commissioner will have to be diplomatic but firm with the industry.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if you\u2019ve had a nice conversation with them, that shouldn\u2019t hold you back from enforcing consumer protection laws, including levying fines or taking them to hearings,\u201d said Laucher, who is now a program specialist at United Policyholders.<\/p>\n Robert Herrell worked at the insurance department for several years. He is now executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, another nonprofit consumer advocacy group.\u00a0<\/p>\n His group and others have asked Lara to withdraw regulations that make it harder for intervenors \u2014 any members of the public who under California law can challenge insurers\u2019 requests to raise premiums \u2014 to have an impact on the insurance department\u2019s rate reviews. The commissioner has said the new rules<\/a>, which the industry supports, are meant to improve efficiency and speed up rate reviews; the consumer groups say the rules are \u201cdesigned to impede effective consumer participation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s exactly the opposite direction of the way you ought to be going,\u201d Herrell said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bach, of United Policyholders, signed onto those joint comments submitted in November by consumer groups, unions and others. But she said some of Lara\u2019s critics are a bit too tough on him.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said the commissioner has to be the \u201cbad guy\u201d on rate increases; hold insurers accountable while encouraging them to keep writing policies in the state; and communicate to consumers that the insurance department can be helpful but doesn\u2019t have the capacity to give them individualized legal aid.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never seen a market like this,\u201d Bach said. \u201cThe balancing act is so brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/042625-EatonFireInsurance-JAJ-08.jpg\")
Soot damage is visible near windows at the home of Rossana Valverde and her husband, Sam Strgacich, in Pasadena on April 26, 2025. Valverde and Strgacich are working with their home insurer to reach a settlement to cover costs associated with repairing damage caused by smoke from the Eaton fire. Credit: Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters<\/p>\n