Maryland insurance commissioner tells Judiciary Committee rising costs, residual-market strains threaten auto and homeowners coverage
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Summary
Maryland Insurance Commissioner Marie Grant told the House Judiciary Committee that homeowners and auto markets face affordability and availability pressures, highlighted small residual pools (JIA and Maryland Auto), and announced regulatory moves to increase transparency in underwriting and monitor territorial and credit-based rating practices.
Maryland Insurance Commissioner Marie Grant told the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 27 that the state’s property-and-casualty markets are under pressure from rising loss costs, shifting underwriting practices and the lingering effects of the pandemic, and she outlined regulatory steps the Maryland Insurance Administration (MIA) is taking to monitor affordability and market stability.
Grant said MIA regulates roughly a $50 billion industry in Maryland with fewer than 300 employees and that the agency is self-funded through industry assessments. She noted premium-tax collections contributed to the general fund were “close to $800,000,000” in fiscal year 2025.
Grant described how MIA oversees solvency, reviews policy forms and rate filings to ensure they are not “inadequate, excessive, or unfairly discriminatory,” and investigates consumer complaints and fraud. On homeowners insurance, she reviewed typical coverages and exclusions and said Maryland’s residual homeowners mechanism, the Maryland Joint Insurance Association (JIA), is very small — about 760 policies in force as of September — serving applicants unable to obtain coverage in the voluntary market.
Turning to auto insurance, Grant said Maryland requires minimum liability coverage of $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident for bodily injury and $15,000 for property damage. She said Maryland’s auto rates rank among the highest in the nation on several metrics and pointed to congestion, commuting patterns and road conditions as contributing factors.
On rating factors, Grant outlined that insurers consider driving history, mileage, garaging location and other predictors of risk. She described Maryland's statutory compromise on credit-history use: “insurers can't use a consumer's credit history to decide whether they will insure the individual, cancel them, renew them, or increase their premium,” she said, but they may use credit history on initial writing subject to statutory limits and must disclose when they do.
Grant highlighted the state’s auto residual market — referred to in the briefing as Maryland Auto — which she said had about 32,000 policies at the end of the year, a roughly 30% decline over the prior year. She explained that Maryland Auto accesses assessments on the private market when its surplus drops below a statutory threshold; those assessments are calculated by market share and can be passed along to consumers. MIA issued an order in December 2024 directing Maryland Auto to phase out use of an affordability index that capped rates, and Grant said the fund requested extra time to comply; MIA granted an extension and is reviewing further requests.
Grant said MIA is moving to require insurers to file personal-home and personal-auto underwriting guidelines with the agency to increase transparency about who is being written and why. She also flagged work stemming from a legislatively ordered auto affordability work group and said departmental legislation on a “low cost auto” option is likely to be proposed this session.
Committee members pressed Grant on territorial (ZIP-code) rating, how much territories are disaggregated in filings, whether credit use is empirically tied to crash risk, and the trade-offs of making Maryland Auto fully rate adequate. Grant said regulators can and will scrutinize territories to ensure they are not used in an unfairly discriminatory way and reiterated that larger policy choices about affordability versus adequacy require legislative consideration.
The committee took no formal votes during the briefing. Grant offered to provide additional materials the committee requested, including underwriting guideline data, more information on ZIP-code use, and limits for JIA policies. She also invited follow-up on telematics, condominium insurance, childcare liability and other topics noted in the presentation.
The briefing concluded with the committee recessing for 15 minutes and scheduling bill hearings afterward.
