Meet the insurance commissioner candidates: Patrick Wolff

Capitol Weekly recently asked a half dozen insurance commissioner candidates to answer a set of identical questions regarding how they would approach this incredibly important and challenging job. The candidates – Sen. Ben Allen, former Sen. Steven Bradford, California Working Families Party executive director Jane Kim, Insurance agent Stacy Korsgaden, Los Angeles school teacher Lalo Vargas and financial analyst Patrick Wolff – all submitted their answers, which we will be presenting individually in alphabetical order by last name. In recent weeks we have featured answers from Sen. Ben Allen, former Sen. Steven Bradford, California Working Families Party executive director Jane Kim, insurance agent Stacy Korsgaden and school teacher Lalo Vargas. This week we bring you the last of these Q&A pieces, this one with financial analysts Patrick Wolff. 

What professional experience or background best prepares you to serve as California’s Insurance Commissioner, and how would that experience guide your decision-making in this role?

I have twenty-five years of relevant professional experience. From 2001-2005 I worked at a major bank, where for those four years my job was to build a home and auto insurance brokerage business. Since 2005, I have worked as a financial analyst, analyzing and investing in markets and companies, including insurance.

I spent most of the year 2025 deeply studying our insurance regulations and the role of Insurance Commissioner. Then, shortly after launching my campaign, I took the time last fall to study for and pass my California P&C insurance license exam, in order to deepen my knowledge of the specifics of how P&C insurance operates in the state of California. To my knowledge, I am the first candidate ever to pass this exam during their campaign.

I believe I am by far the most qualified Insurance Commissioner candidate in this election cycle.

We need to stop electing politicians to this role and instead elect someone with deep insurance and financial knowledge who is totally focused on making insurance work for the people the way it should.

Many Californians report difficulty finding or keeping homeowners insurance coverage. What is your plan to ensure insurance remains available statewide, particularly in higher-risk areas?

Fixing our insurance crisis requires reorienting the California Department of Insurance. It is too lax regulating the behavior of insurance companies, while being too strict controlling their market access. Instead, we need to be much smarter and stronger in holding insurance companies accountable, while increasing choice and competition by making it much easier for companies to come to market.

The way to ensure that insurance remains available statewide – particularly in higher-risk areas – is to create the conditions where insurance companies can operate profitably. This means allowing them to use to predict risk using models that take climate change into account as a reality, rather than forcing them to use historical experience that may not be representative of the future; it means allowing them to factor in the cost of reinsurance – which is a normal part of insurance operations – into their allowable rates; and it means streamlining the rate filing review process so that insurance companies can get all normal rate filings that follow the rules reviewed and approved within sixty days, rather than the 300 or more days that has been the case. Doing all of this will entice many insurance companies to California’s giant insurance market, ensuring there is ample choice and robust competition.

However, creating choice and competition only benefits consumers if we also regulate the behavior of insurance companies strictly and effectively. Insurance companies must be allowed to earn a reasonable profit, but must never be allowed to earn anything more than a reasonable profit. This means ensuring that plans are clearly explained so customers know what they have; it means ensuring that coverage is adequate to consumers’ needs; and it means making sure that insurance companies are not allowed to withhold claims payments by engaging in the practice of “delay, deny, and defend,” – delaying paying valid claims, denying paying valid claims, and choosing to defend themselves in court because they calculate that defending a court case is more profitable than paying what they owe.

By increasing choice and competition, insurance will be easily and readily available statewide again. And by holding insurance companies accountable, customers will be empowered, insurance companies will be forced to provide good service, and pricing will be fair.

How would you propose to bolster California’s FAIR Plan?

The long term fix to the FAIR Plan is to fix the regular market. The FAIR Plan was always intended to be only a temporary stopgap for customers who find themselves in between insurance companies, so that coverage would be available at all times. But because of California’s broken insurance market, the FAIR Plan has become one of the largest and by far the fastest growing insurance plan in California. The long term goal is to shrink the FAIR Plan by fixing the regular market and having customers naturally migrate over to where coverage is better and cheaper.

In the meantime, however, the FAIR Plan must be bolstered in two ways. First, as insurance companies come back to California because they are able to operate in the regular market with a reasonable profit, they must in return be required to invest in improving the FAIR Plan operations. Second, as choice and competition returns to the regular market, we need to allow FAIR Plan pricing to be actuarially sound. This will incentivize customers to return to the regular market – where coverage will be higher quality and lower cost – and it will ensure that the finances of the FAIR Plan are sound on their own, so that they do not require being subsidized either by taxpayers or by non-FAIR Plan ratepayers.

California insurance rates — especially homeowners insurance — have risen sharply in recent years. What specific actions would you take as Insurance Commissioner to slow or reduce rate increases while ensuring insurers remain financially stable?

Having an insurance market with robust choice and competition and where insurance companies are held accountable ensures that pricing will be fair. However, even in a fair market – where insurance companies are only able to charge enough to cover their costs – if the risk is higher then the cost will be higher. The only way to reduce rates (or slow their rate of increase) is to reduce risk.

What has been driving up the risk of homeowners insurance is the severity and frequency of wildfires. Therefore, we need to take actions to reduce both the severity and frequency of wildfires.

At the home and community level, this means hardening homes and communities. Homeowners need clear guidance about what actions they can take to make their homes safer. That guidance needs to be aligned with insurance company underwriting. Insurance companies, as a condition of operating in California, need to be required to provide that clear, actionable guidance aligned with underwriting, and they need to be required to provide meaningful discounts for taking those actions. At the same time, the Department of Insurance needs to provide reasonable financial assistance in the form of grants and favorable financing. Such financial assistance is necessary and justified because home hardening is expensive, and because home hardening has positive social benefits – hardening your home helps your neighbor as well as yourself.

At the more macro level, this means taking responsible actions to reduce the available fuel for wildfires by doing more controlled burns and by clearing underbrush. These actions cannot be taken directly by the Department of Insurance; however, the Insurance Commissioner can advocate for the relevant government entities to step up to their responsibilities and take these actions.

How will you maintain independence from insurance companies, political parties, and special interests while serving as Insurance Commissioner? Please describe any ethics standards or transparency practices you would implement or strengthen.

I have pledged not to accept any money from insurance companies. In addition, I have pledged that I will not run for any other public office after being elected Insurance Commissioner. I will have absolutely no outside interests to bias my decision-making, so that I can focus 100% on doing what is right and best for the California customers and residents.

Previous insurance commissioners have accepted generous gifts such as travel and fancy meals. Some of the politicians running for this office have similarly accepted generous gifts while in office. I intend not to accept any such generous gifts as Insurance Commissioner, regardless of whether doing so would be allowed. I believe it is important to set the right tone at the top that I am only doing this job for the good of the people, and not for fancy perks or future favors.

Wildfire and natural disaster risk increasingly shape California’s insurance market. What role should the Insurance Commissioner play in addressing these risks — before disasters occur — and how should costs be shared among insurers, homeowners, and the state?

As outlined in my answer to question #4, reducing wildfire risk is critical to reducing risk, which in turn is critical to reducing rates. In this answer I will address the question of how the costs should be shared among insurers, homeowners, and the state.

Insurance companies should be allowed to make a reasonable profit, but never an unreasonable profit. I define a “reasonable” profit as being roughly around their cost of capital, so long as the insurance company is conservatively capitalized and appropriately reserved. “Conservatively capitalized” means low to moderate leverage, with the majority of the assets invested in high-grade bonds or similar. “Appropriately reserved” means the reserves taken for the risks should be within a reasonable range, which is neither too low nor too high. If reserves are too low, then the insurance company is not setting aside enough for the risk they are taking; if reserves are too high, then the insurance company is lying about how much money they are making. (Overly high reserves over time result in what is called “favorable development,” where the insurance company consistently adds more to its net worth than is recognized through its P&L.) So long as insurance companies are making only a reasonable profit, then they are being fairly but never unfairly paid for the social benefit they provide, which means premiums are “neither excessive nor inadequate,” which is exactly what voters intended when they passed Proposition 103.

Before taking issues of equity into consideration, homeowners should pay the amount of cost that roughly aligns to what benefits them in terms of increasing their home’s value. (Note, however, that homeowners should also get lower insurance costs in return for that investment.) However, some of this investment amounts to a “public good,” i.e. it helps other people as well. Therefore, some amount of home hardening should be paid by the state. Some homeowners will find it an economic burden to make these investments, and in these cases the state should subsidize these costs to a greater degree.

The state (i.e. taxpayers) should pay for risk reduction actions that are purely a public good and have no private benefit. For example, the state needs to pay for all risk reduction actions on public lands.

Finally, we should explore ways to realign incentives to make private actors such as insurance companies and homeowners even more motivated to reduce risks. One example of this is exploring the possibility of allowing entire communities to purchase insurance as a group with longer renewal periods than a single year; this could potentially increase the incentives of both the insurance company and the community to make larger, longer-term investments to reduce risk, since the benefits would accrue over a larger number of people and over a longer period of time.

Bonus questions (optional)

California law allows private plaintiff groups to “intervene” in insurance rate filings by challenging an insurer’s rate filing request. Insurers then compensate the intervenor for its costs. Supporters of the process say it helps consumers, while opponents claim it simply duplicates work the CA Department of Insurance already does to evaluate insurer rate filing requests. Where do you stand on California’s intervenor process? 

I believe the intervenor process can be very valuable when it is used surgically, to address special cases where there is a clear need to intervene. An example of this is State Farm’s demand for an “emergency rate hike.” This rate hike amounts to a surcharge imposed on current and future customers in order to compensate for its inadequate underwriting by exploiting its temporary market power due to lack of competition. Meanwhile, there is substantial evidence that claimants are being treated very poorly by State Farm. This situation cries out for aggressive intervention.

In a better functioning market, however, the rate review process should be streamlined, and strict reviews should be reserved for special cases so that companies can have the reasonable certainty and flexibility they need to operate economically.

How should voters measure whether an Insurance Commissioner is succeeding? What outcomes should Californians expect to see by the end of your first term?

I believe the Department of Insurance should publish an annual benchmarking report that compares California’s insurance market to all the other Western, fire-prone states so we can see whether our rates are fair and our coverage is adequate. Such a report would give voters and customers the transparency to determine whether the Insurance Commissioner is succeeding or not.

By the end of my first term, Californians should expect to see an insurance market with ample choice and competition, where insurance companies are effectively regulated so that pricing and service are fair, and with sufficient transparency to be able to make those judgments. In addition, Californians should see that we are well on the path to bringing down the risks associated with climate change, with a clear view to how we will continue to make progress over time.