Maine has weathered a year of significant, multi-million dollar natural disasters remarkably well in terms of home insurance rates, according to a recent report from Insurify, an online insurance comparison company. While the national average saw premiums increase by 9%, Maine experienced a decrease in home insurance rates between 2023 and 2024. This performance earned the state the top spot on Insurify’s Climate Change Stability Index, achieving a perfect score of 100.
This stability is largely attributed to Maine’s geographical position, which shields it from the climate change-fueled wildfires and tropical storms that severely impacted other states between 2019 and 2024. The report’s authors explained, “Maine’s geography protects it from excessive natural disasters, including tropical cyclones, which are generally the most expensive types of disasters. Those storms rely on warm water and tend to cool and lose strength by the time they’ve reached Maine.”
Across New England, home insurance rates have demonstrated relative stability in the face of climate change. New Hampshire secured a close second place, while Vermont and Massachusetts also earned positions in the top 10 for stability. Both Maine and New Hampshire boasted average annual insurance premiums around $1,200 in 2024—less than half the national average of $2,584.
The Insurify report acknowledged the extreme flooding that ravaged all three New England states during the past two years, including the $480 million in damages Maine incurred from 2024’s winter storms and summer floods. However, this figure pales in comparison to the average state facing similar issues, which has seen five times the number of disasters at 35 times the cost, according to Chase Gardner, Insurify’s data analysis manager.
“I think the biggest factor driving that is just the risk angle,” Gardner said in an interview. “The climate and natural disaster risk in Maine (is) so low in comparison to most other states.”
The report’s analysis integrates Insurify’s proprietary data alongside data from a third-party insurance data aggregator. Also included is public information that insurance companies are required to submit to state regulators prior to rate increases, according to Gardner. Statewide averages are calculated using premium data from diverse ZIP codes, considering variations in geography and demographics for a comprehensive state-level insurance rates overview.
Maine’s data encompassed densely populated cities alongside smaller mountain and coastal communities. The data also included towns along the Canadian border in Aroostook County, Gardner said.
The Home Insurance Climate Stability Index, developed by Insurify, assesses each state on a 0 to 100 scale based on various factors including major disaster frequency, per capita cost of major disasters, average home insurance rates, rate changes, and the ratio of insurers’ losses compared to their premium revenue.
Maine’s high ranking on the index is bolstered by its relatively infrequent and less expensive disasters. Further, Maine has the second-lowest average loss ratio nationwide. This means insurance claims do not outweigh the premium revenues for insurers as they do in Louisiana, which has the highest loss ratio in the country.
Though Maine home insurance rates decreased by 4% between 2023 and 2024 – a period punctuated by major floods – Gardner cautioned that it can sometimes take more than a year after a natural disaster for insurance companies to file for rate increases. This means that Maine’s home insurance stability is subject to change.
“At the minimum, I would say it would take six months” for insurance companies to respond to natural disasters with rate increases, Gardner said. “But in all likelihood, you probably have to wait a year, if not more, to kind of see the full effects of what a storm might have on an industry.”
In a separate report published by Insurify last February, it was projected that Maine would see one of the highest year-over-year insurance premium increases, rising from $1,322 in 2023 to $1,571 in 2024. However, instead of the 19% projected increase, Maine’s rates went down to an average of $1,266 in 2024.
Greg Thayer, a Batchelder Bros. Insurance manager based in Sanford, suggested that this discrepancy might have arisen from an overemphasis on insurance rates in Maine’s more vulnerable coastal regions. “When you look at Maine and see (average insurance premiums) going up 19%, that is slightly misleading,” Thayer told The Monitor in an interview last July. “You’re not seeing that across the board. It really is focused on places with particularly high wind events … and a lot of that is driven by the coast.”
Gardner emphasized that Maine’s perfect stability score is relative to the rest of the nation, and the impact of climate change-influenced disasters means that Maine, along with the rest of New England, cannot guarantee the complete absence of major weather events like those occurring in other regions. “We say Maine or New England is the most resilient, but hopefully that’s not interpreted as 100% resilient,” Gardner stated. “There’s always the threat with climate change that something could happen,” he added, referencing the consecutive summer flooding events that impacted Vermont in 2023 and 2024.
This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization.
