Patrick Wolff, California insurance commissioner candidate, 2026 primary election questionnaire

Ahead of the June primary election, the Southern California News Group compiled a list of questions to pose to the candidates who wish to represent you. You can find the full questionnaire below. Questionnaires may have been edited for spelling, grammar, length and, in some instances, to remove hate speech and offensive language.

Name: Patrick Wolff

Current job title: Financial Analyst

Age: 58

Political party affiliation: Democratic

Incumbent: No

Other political positions held: None

City where you reside: San Francisco

Campaign website or social media: patrickwolff.com

Why do you want to become the insurance commissioner? What does a commissioner do? (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

I am running to make insurance in California fair, efficient and transparent. I have over 25 years of professional experience in insurance and financial analysis. I will be fiercely independent: I am taking no money from insurance companies. I pledge not to accept any corporate gifts – unlike the current Insurance Commissioner and many of my political opponents. I have never run for public office before, and I will not run for any other public office if elected; I am running to put my experience and expertise to work for the people of California, not to launch a political career.

The Insurance Commissioner runs the Department of Insurance, which employs 1,400 professionals. The Department of Insurance regulates all property and casualty insurance, all life insurance, and a small amount of health insurance. The Insurance Commissioner is the ultimate decision-maker for how the regulations are interpreted, implemented, and enforced. The Insurance Commissioner is elected by the people and does not report to the governor or legislature. It is an extremely important elected position because the Insurance Commissioner can ultimately fix or break our insurance system.

I believe the reason California’s insurance markets are in crisis is that we have been electing politicians to the role of Insurance Commissioner instead of someone qualified, experienced, and totally focused on doing the job for the good of the people.

When it comes to wildfire risks, how would you balance consumer protection with a functioning, competitive market? What would you have done differently to reform homeowners’ insurance following efforts to help L.A. rebuild from the wildfires? (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

There should not be a tradeoff between consumer protection and fostering a functioning, competitive market. We can hold insurance companies accountable without inhibiting competition or adding costs, and we can promote choice and competition while empowering customers and fostering transparency. This requires independent leadership with insurance experience that resists pressure from the insurance industry.

For example, the Department of Insurance collects Market Conduct Annual Surveys, which analyze the behavior of insurance companies in detail and identify how well each insurance company behaves on claims. Unfortunately, the insurance industry has lobbied to anonymize this data, shielding individual companies. As Insurance Commissioner, I will release company-specific data and create an easy-to-understand claims performance report card for each insurance company, to be provided to every consumer who is shopping or renewing insurance.

Another example is the need to establish modern smoke damage standards. Modern wildfires create unprecedented levels of smoke damage that insurance companies do not sufficiently cover. The Department of Insurance correctly created a task force to develop new standards for what insurance policies must cover – but unfortunately, the task force became dominated by insurance industry insiders. As a result, the task force did not do what was needed, and the issue is now in the legislature, where it risks being politicized and watered down by lobbyists. Californians deserve an Insurance Commissioner who will keep insurance companies at bay and allow the Department to modernize standards in an unbiased way.

The state’s Department of Insurance says it is holding insurers accountable with its new “sustainable insurance strategy.” SIS allows insurance companies to increase rates based on the growing threat of climate change, passing on to their customers costs for insuring high-risk homes. In exchange, insurance companies are expected to write more polices in fire-prone parts of the state, where they’ve ended coverage for hundreds of thousands of homeowners over the past decade. The goal of SIS is to help transition property owners off the FAIR Plan. Tell us why you do — or don’t — support this strategy. (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

I support the goal of the SIS to transition property owners off the FAIR Plan, but there are major problems with its implementation.

Insurance companies must underwrite risks accurately. Before the SIS, insurance companies were prohibited from using the best possible models to predict future risk of wildfires. It is wrong for the government to tell insurance companies they can’t use the best possible science to predict risk.

The right way to make pricing fair and efficient is to foster a robust market with lots of choice and competition. That way, customers can shop for the best price, and insurance companies will compete for customers of all levels of risk so everyone has options. Subsidies can then be provided to households that struggle to pay higher rates but are doing the right things to reduce risk.

Unfortunately, the Insurance Commissioner let the Department of Insurance dictate which ZIP codes insurance companies had to serve in order to get higher pricing. This created a system that insurance companies could exploit. Now, insurance companies are being allowed to charge higher rates for serving houses that are not really higher risk. Instead of competing against each other, the insurance companies are taking advantage of loopholes created by the Department of Insurance.

The SIS is the right idea. But it requires an Insurance Commissioner with real-world expertise in insurance to be implemented correctly. As Insurance Commissioner, I will close the loopholes and shortcuts insurance companies are using to cheat the system.

State Farm teetered on insolvency in the state after the L.A. wildfires. Everyone’s homeowners’ insurance policies rose this past year due to the consumer bailout of State Farm and the FAIR Plan, both of which sought huge rate increases. Is this fair to consumers who don’t live in fire-prone areas? Tell us why or why not. (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

No, it is not fair, and it shows why it is so important to have a competent Insurance Commissioner. The situation with State Farm represents two catastrophic regulatory failures.

In spite of the huge losses from the catastrophic fires of 2017/2018, the Insurance Commissioner still prohibited insurance companies from using accurate models to predict fire risk. This was the first regulatory failure: it caused many insurance companies to leave the state, with the FAIR Plan exploding, and the insurance market becoming increasingly devoid of choice and competition.

State Farm was an exception – instead of leaving, they expanded aggressively in California. But in allowing State Farm to expand, the Insurance Commissioner made a second regulatory failure: allowing State Farm to operate in California as a legally separate subsidiary from the parent company that operates nationwide. The point of this legal trickery was to let the parent company off the hook in case the California subsidiary ran into financial trouble.

Sure enough, when the LA fires happened, the California State Farm subsidiary got into big financial trouble – and the parent company refused to come to its rescue. As a consequence, State Farm is nickel and diming its policyholders on paying claims at the very moment victims are most in need. And then, while stiffing its customers, State Farm turned around and demanded an “emergency” rate hike!

As Insurance Commissioner, I will never allow such catastrophic failures of judgment to happen again in the Department of Insurance.

Catastrophe modeling is a computer-based process that simulates thousands of potential natural or man-made disasters to estimate potential financial losses. Do you believe California could utilize catastrophe modeling that could lead to rate increases for homeowners? Why or why not? (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

As noted above, the most important thing is to predict risk accurately – and then foster a healthy, competitive market so that insurance companies are held accountable, customers are treated fairly, and insurance companies are never able to charge customers more than they should.

If using more accurate risk modeling leads to rate increases – and if pricing is fair, with no insurance company ever able to price gouge or exploit market power – then the rate increases are an accurate reflection of the true risk. Knowing the true risk will allow us, as a state, to align incentives and focus our efforts on reducing that risk. For example, we can take actions to harden homes and better manage land to reduce fire risk.

Also, once we know the true risk, any equity-based subsidies and support will be more fair, because it can be targeted accurately to people who truly need help.

The California FAIR Plan is the state’s insurer of last resort. Is it fair for the plan to charge people to recover losses on a $1 billion assessment to pay for L.A. fire claims, even when these same people weren’t living in the wildfire areas? Please explain why or why not. (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

No, it is not fair. It is also counterproductive to fixing the insurance market.

The FAIR Plan is government-mandated, but privately run: all California insurance companies share in the profit and loss of the FAIR Plan proportionately to their market share throughout the state. If FAIR Plan losses exceed its capacity to pay, the insurance companies must pay into the FAIR Plan proportionately to make good on claims. The insurance companies are then allowed to turn around and charge their non-FAIR Plan customers to recoup what they paid in: up to 50% of the first $1 billion total paid in for any given year, and then 100% of the amount over $1 billion paid in for any given year.

This arrangement is unfair for non-FAIR Plan customers. And what’s more, subsidizing the FAIR Plan prevents the regular, non-FAIR Plan market from recovering, which keeps the system broken.

The only sustainable path forward is to fix the regular insurance market. As the non-FAIR market is rejuvenated with ample choice and competition, FAIR Plan pricing must be allowed to become fully actuarially sound, as is already required by law. This will incentivize FAIR Plan customers to seek better and cheaper coverage off the FAIR Plan, and it will ensure the FAIR Plan is financially sound, so we can stop allowing insurance companies to charge non-FAIR Plan customers for FAIR Plan losses.

Shouldn’t major insurers like State Farm and Allstate be permitted to cancel policies and leave the marketplace? Why not just let them leave? (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

We cannot build a healthy insurance market by trying to force insurance companies to operate here. The way to build a healthy insurance market is to increase choice and competition by having smart, strong regulation that holds insurance companies accountable, empowers customers, and creates transparency under conditions that allow insurance companies to operate economically.

Insurance is a business where companies can enter and exit California pretty easily. (This is totally different from power utilities, for example.) When the market is dysfunctional, the ease of exit is scary, and can make us want to do anything necessary to keep insurance companies from leaving. But that is the wrong idea. The right idea is to have a healthy market that uses the ease of entry to attract lots of insurance companies so we all benefit from ample choice and competition.

As noted above, California has had problems with State Farm. There are many insurance companies that are more innovative and treat their customers better than State Farm has done. We should be happy to have a market that allows State Farm to leave if it wants to, so long as our market also attracts many more insurance companies to come and compete for our business.

As of March, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is moving forward with finalizing new regulations to limit public oversight and transparency in insurance rate increases under 7%. A finalized rule effectively curtails public challenges to insurance rate increases by denying compensation to groups like Consumer Watchdog and other advocacy organizations. What do you think of this plan? (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

At the time of this writing, the proposed regulations are not yet finalized and are still subject to comments and revision. My understanding is the purpose of these new regulations is not to limit oversight and transparency or to deny compensation; the purpose is to clarify how consumer advocates are compensated for public challenges. Hopefully, that is what the final regulations will do.

In general, I strongly support the effort to streamline the timeline of filing reviews and approvals. Insurance companies filing product or rate changes receive approval in other states within 60 days. In California, it takes 300 days – and sometimes much longer! – with no certainty about the result. These endless delays and capricious rulings are disastrous for choice and competition. Insurers need a reasonable level of clarity in a reasonable amount of time in order to operate economically, and consumers need competitive rates to come to market much faster.

The Insurance Commissioner must reserve the power to impose strict reviews in special cases as needed, and the public needs to have full transparency with insurance company pricing. I am confident these can be balanced with the need to radically reduce red tape so that competition and choice can be dramatically increased. If the regulations are not reformed to achieve these goals, then once I am elected Insurance Commissioner, I will finish the job to make sure customers get the choice and competition they deserve while preserving consumer protections.

Car insurance rates are skyrocketing in California, with rates jumping over 30% since 2022, driven by expensive vehicles, complex repairs and new safety requirements. What could you do to contain auto insurance costs when a driver has no accidents? (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

The way to get the best possible price is to have lots of insurance companies competing for your business, while preventing insurance companies from ever taking advantage of customers. This is why I am absolutely committed to increasing choice and competition while holding insurance companies accountable.

When it comes to containing auto insurance costs, we can use technology to improve the ability of auto insurance companies to reward safe driving. California specifically requires insurance companies to make the insured’s driving safety record the single most important factor in setting auto insurance rates. However, current regulations do not allow insurance companies to use modern technology to measure your driving safety record. Every single other state allows the customer to opt in to using modern technology (called “telematics”) to record their driving behavior; California prohibits it because of privacy concerns.

Privacy is a critical issue, and must be strongly addressed. I believe the customer must own their own user-specific data, the data shared with insurance companies must be anonymized as much as possible while still allowing for accurate underwriting, and insurance companies must be absolutely prohibited from selling or sharing whatever data they collect. And of course, there must be total transparency with the customer making the decision to opt in or out of telematics.

If we get this right, then using modern technology will reward safe drivers, lower costs with more accurate pricing, and attract more insurance companies to California – a true win/win/win.

How do you think taxpayers could better understand the work of this office? (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

I am committed to improving the Department’s transparency. The website should be fully modernized. (The same is true of its back office.) The annual report should be made much more readable to the public. The Insurance Commissioner should write an annual letter to the California public in plain English, explaining the key facts and developments in California’s insurance markets. The Department should also publish an annual benchmarking report comparing California’s insurance rates to those of all the other Western states. Consumers and businesses need an objective benchmark of California’s market versus other, similarly wildfire-affected states to make sure pricing is fair and efficient.

Communication that is clear, direct, and trustworthy is absolutely essential in any leadership role. The Insurance Commissioner is not just the person in charge of a regulatory department; the Insurance Commissioner is the person who holds the trust of the California public regarding its insurance system. I will treat that trust with the deep seriousness and respect it deserves.

I think there is a lot of room for improvement in how the Insurance Commissioner helps taxpayers and the general public understand the work of the Department of Insurance. I will do everything I can to improve transparency and communication when I am the Insurance Commissioner.

What’s a hidden talent you have? (Please answer in 250 words or less.)

I am a chess grandmaster, and before I graduated from college, I was the United States Chess Champion twice: in 1992 and 1995. A fun fact is that the last game in the Netflix show Queen’s Gambit was based on a game I played in 1993 (Ivanchuk vs. Wolff). It has been 30 years since I last played chess seriously, but I still love the game, and it makes me very happy to see how popular chess has become.

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