The number of homeowners who have been nonrenewed or canceled by their insurance company has doubled since 2021. Commissioner Kuderer is working to increase transparency for consumers by requiring insurance companies to provide consumers with more information about the wildfire risk scores impacting their home insurance.
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Insurance companies use third-party wildfire risk scores to evaluate a property’s exposure and to determine eligibility for coverage, pricing, and renewals. Companies establishing these scores use satellite imagery, property data, insurance loss data, and fire science to create wildfire risk assessments, down to the individual property level, and then sell these scores to insurance companies.
Kuderer proposed a bill in 2026 to require insurers to disclose wildfire risk scores when used, explain the factors behind the score, and provide plain-language steps that consumers can take to improve their score. If the consumer has done mitigation work since the last evaluation, or there are demonstrable inaccuracies with the current evaluation, they can appeal.
The bill passed the Senate 48-1, but did not advance out of the House Consumer Protection & Business Committee.
Wildfire risk scores are separate from Washington Surveying & Rating Bureau classifications, which evaluate community-level data on fire response, not property conditions. They’re different than climate-related risk scores available on real estate websites, which aren’t used in insurance underwriting and may not account for community or property-level mitigation efforts.
Improving consumer transparency was one of the recommendations from the Wildfire mitigation and resiliency standards work group.