Local

California adds new FAIR Plan enforcement tools

Assembly Bill 1680 requires corrective action after regulatory violations and authorizes penalties of up to $20,000 against the state’s last-resort property insurer.

Image credit: Sgt. 1st Class Jon Soucy, U.S. Army / Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the United States; archival January 2025 photograph of Palisades Fire damage, not the September 2026 bill signing or FAIR Plan operations

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1680 on September 27, giving California’s insurance commissioner stronger tools to enforce examination findings against the FAIR Plan. The association provides basic property coverage to people who cannot obtain insurance through the regular market.

What it means locally

Under the enrolled law, the FAIR Plan must take corrective action when an examination or operational report identifies violations of statutes, regulations, accounting principles, its operating plan or other binding rules. Failure to complete the required correction within an agreed timeframe can bring a penalty of up to $20,000. Other violations can draw penalties of as much as $10,000 per act, or $20,000 for a willful act. The commissioner may also require adjustments to available policy limits and additional fair-rental-value coverage options under the plan’s renters program. The California Department of Insurance proposed the reforms after its review found unresolved financial, governance and consumer-protection problems, with complaints intensifying after the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. The accompanying photograph shows homes destroyed by the Palisades Fire in January 2025 and is not an image of the bill signing or FAIR Plan operations.

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