North Carolina among states with fastest-growing car insurance rates: Insurify

(NEXSTAR) – If you like your car insurance company right now, consider yourself lucky.

A combination of multiple factors, including climate-driven natural disasters, inflation and the soaring prices of new cars, among others, is projected to send premiums rocketing higher in 2024, according to a study by online insurance marketplace Insurify.

After rates climbed 15% nationwide in the first half of the year, Insurify projects coverage to spike 22% during 2024, but some states will be hit especially hard.

Thanks in part to severe storms and wildfire damage that resulted in massive payouts, three states are set to experience increases over 50%, the study found: California (54%), Missouri (55%) and Minnesota (61%).

For companies that bundle home and auto insurance, for instance, widespread destruction from severe weather events – especially in areas that doesn't usually see it – can force insurers to raise costs, or even cancel policies.

Missouri and Minnesota have both seen extreme hail storms this year, triggering a flood of insurance claims, and California's devastating wildfires continue to burn annually. In March, State Farm announced it would stop renewing tens of thousands of homeowner policies in the Golden State.

Added to the ongoing rise in auto insurance premiums are car prices themselves, which shot up during the pandemic when supply chain issues choked the supply of new vehicles and the computer chips that go in them.

The average price of a new vehicle in July was $48,401, according to Kelley Blue Book, up from roughly $36,000 during 2019 before the pandemic. Higher prices and more expensive parts make it costlier for insurance companies to cover accidents.

"The severity is really the thing that has influenced rates more over the last two years than anything," Greg Smolan, vice president of insurance operations at AAA Northeast, told the Associated Press. "A fender bender in the past didn't have all the sensors and cameras."

The increase in auto insurance premiums in 2024 is just the continuation of companies' rate hikes in 2023 (24% nationwide), according to Insurify.

Price increases for insurance rates, like many other increases from food to clothing, have been sticky and are less likely to drop at the same rate as broader inflation, if at all.

That has been beneficial for insurers who have seen profits surge. Wall Street is expecting bigger leaps in 2024.

The five states with the fastest-growing car insurance rates, according to Insurify, are:

In some states, costly auto insurance isn't a new thing. The data scientists behind the study looked at Insurify's "more than 97 million rates in its proprietary database" for drivers between 20 and 70 with clean records and found that the following five states will have the highest projected average premiums at the end of 2024: Maryland ($3,748), South Carolina ($3,687), New York ($3,484), Nevada ($3,531) and Florida ($3,444).

The Associated Press contributed to this report.