On Wednesday, February 11, Washington Senate Bill 5928 passed the state Senate by a 48–1 vote, moving forward the potential bill requiring insurance companies’ discloser of wildfire risk assessment onto the state’s House of Representatives.
Senate Bill 5928 would require insurance companies, when they use third-party wildfire risk scores in home insurance, to disclose the wildfire risk scores, explain the factors behind the score, and provide plain-language steps consumers can take to improve their score. It would also allow property owners to appeal decisions where they have completed mitigation work since the last evaluation or identify demonstrable inaccuracies in the evaluation. The bill is not yet final law; It now moves to the Washington House of Representatives for consideration, meaning key implementation details, including timing, remain unspecified.
Insurers use third-party wildfire risk scores to determine eligibility for coverage, pricing, and renewals, and distinguishes those scores from Washington Surveying & Rating Bureau classifications (community-level fire response data) and from climate-related scores on real estate websites (not used in underwriting). These scores may fail to account for community or property-level mitigation efforts such, according to Washington’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner. For instance, Washington Senate Bill 6079 would create a pilot grant programme to help homeowners retrofit existing structures to standards of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) Wildfire Prepared Home and is currently with the state’s Rules Committee for second reading.
Supporters for Bill 5928 included the Washington Hospitality Association, Washington Realtors, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, and the Washington Fire Chiefs Association.
