The Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) today announced the launch of its Insurance Affordability Index, an interactive tool built to show how personal auto and homeowners insurance costs compare with household income in each U.S. state. The launch gives insurers, regulators and consumers a shared reference point for state-level cost comparisons that have often relied on scattered, inconsistent data. For an industry accustomed to state-by-state rate filings that rarely speak the same language, a single public dashboard changes how those comparisons get made, and by whom.
A National Snapshot Turns State-Specific
The Index measures insurance costs relative to household income in each state, combining the Insurance Research Council’s (IRC) established affordability methodology with Triple-I’s underwriting expertise and the latest available data. That pairing of an established methodology with fresh underwriting data is what distinguishes this release from a one-off survey. Triple-I says the tool provides The result is a timely, state-by-state view of insurance affordability through 2025. For teams building rate justification or renewal narratives, having that view centralized in one place removes a step that previously meant assembling data state by state.
Those national figures, however, mask substantial differences among states driven by variations in risk, claims costs and market conditions. The new resource is meant to make those gaps legible to consumers, policymakers and the media rather than leaving them buried in state-specific rate filings. That framing positions the Index as much as a market-transparency exercise as a research product, with implications for how affordability arguments get made in front of regulators.
Auto Costs Edge Up, Homeowners Costs Jump
Nationally, the Index estimates personal auto insurance represents 1.7% of median household income, up 9% since 2020, while homeowners insurance represents 2.4%, up 24% over the same period. The gap between the two lines also shows up in recent regulator data on rising homeowners insurance costs and nonrenewals. The divergence between the two lines is likely to keep homeowners affordability, rather than auto, at the center of state-level policy debates in the near term.
“Insurance costs vary significantly across America, and for good reason: no two states carry the same catastrophe risk, legal environment or economic pressures,” said Sean Kevelighan, CEO of Triple-I. “The Affordability Index brings the data and cost drivers together in one place, making those differences understandable, not mysterious. It gives consumers, policymakers and the media a common set of facts and a clearer picture of what is shaping insurance costs in each state, helping inform decisions about how and where risks are greatest, how to build and how to better protect what matters most.”
For carriers, regulators and analysts tracking premium trends across jurisdictions, the split between the two lines offers a common benchmark that was previously scattered across separate state filings and rate reviews. It also gives brokers a plain-language way to explain to clients why premiums in one state can diverge sharply from a seemingly similar state next door.
Three Factors Behind the State Rankings
Before exploring individual states, users can examine three factors that help explain the broader insurance environment. Market health and availability: Indicators including residual market share, excess and surplus (E&S) market share, and regulatory rate-approval times help show whether private insurers are willing and able to write coverage in a market. For homeowners insurance, the map also identifies states facing the greatest availability pressure. That focus on availability, not just price, matters for markets where carriers have been pulling back capacity as much as raising rates.
Cost pressure on the supply side gets its own treatment in the tool. Replacement costs: The Index tracks changes in the costs of rebuilding homes and repairing vehicles, many components of which have risen faster than overall inflation since 2020. That trend lines up with this year’s expanding wildfire exposure across new parts of the country. Insurance and other household costs: Insurance’s share of household income is presented alongside other major expenses, including housing, food and transportation, putting insurance costs within the broader household budget. Presenting insurance alongside rent, food and transportation costs is a deliberate choice: it invites comparisons to household budgets that a premium figure alone does not.
The two Triple-I executives quoted in the release each emphasized a different half of the same argument: cost drivers on one side, transparency on the other. “Insurance premiums are shaped by the underlying cost of claims,” said Pat Schmid, chief insurance officer at Triple-I and president of the IRC. “The Affordability Index brings these factors together to show what’s driving insurance affordability and market conditions in each state.”
What Each State Page Shows
At the center of the tool is an interactive U.S. map that users can toggle between personal auto and homeowners insurance. States are ranked based on average premium as a share of median household income and placed into five affordability tiers, ranging from most affordable to least sffordable. That five-tier structure gives users a quick read on relative standing without requiring them to parse the underlying percentages first.
Each state’s detail page adds several layers of context. Premium-to-income trends: Five-year and two-year views showing how the state compares with the national benchmark. Asset value comparisons: Insurance costs relative to home value for homeowners coverage and vehicle value for personal auto. Framing costs against asset value, not just income, lets a homeowner in a high-value market and one in a lower-value market see comparable numbers.
The rankings dig deeper still, breaking down the forces behind each state’s placement. Cost-driver rankings: State rankings based on IRC research into the factors influencing insurance costs, including catastrophe exposure, claim frequency and severity, repair costs, expenses and claims litigation. Location-specific risk information: Regional hazards contributing to a state’s results, such as flood exposure, storm patterns or congested traffic corridors. Tying cost drivers to specific regional hazards is what turns a ranking into something closer to a risk explainer.
Consumer mitigation actions: Practical steps residents can take to address risks identified in their state and potentially help reduce their insurance costs. That category echoes one state’s grant-funded push to reduce hail damage claims, and it points back to the economic, risk and market factors driving those differences that Triple-I designed the Index to surface. Whether that mitigation guidance moves the needle on future filings is something only renewal-cycle data will show.
Together, the map and the state pages are pitched less as a marketing tool than as a shared reference for the affordability debate that insurers, regulators and consumer advocates have argued over largely along state lines. Whether it succeeds will likely depend less on the underlying data, most of which regulators and carriers already track internally, than on whether it becomes a reference point the way established indices in other lines eventually did.
