Texas Home Insurance Rates Fall 4.3% as Auto Filings Cut Too

Rate cuts reach Texas home and auto insurance

For the first time in several years, Texas regulators have good news to report on property and casualty insurance prices. The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) said on October 8 that most homeowners insurers that filed rate changes since July 1 asked for decreases. Those filings cover about 700,000 policyholders, and the average filed homeowners rate change over the past 90 days was a 4.3% cut.52

The agency named two of the state's ten largest insurance groups by premium volume. ASI Lloyds, part of Progressive, filed a 6% decrease affecting about 71,000 policyholders. Texas Farm Bureau Mutual filed a 5.2% decrease affecting about 133,000.23 On the auto side, insurers have filed decreases affecting 4.4 million policyholders since July 1. Those include a 3% cut from Auto Club County Mutual, which covers about 235,000 drivers, and a 10.3% cut from Loya Insurance Company, which covers about 39,000.424

Gov. Greg Abbott said premiums must reflect real risk and that he would work with the Legislature next session to further curb premium increases.1 Insurance Commissioner Amanda Crawford called the filings an encouraging sign and said relief is beginning to reach the market. She urged Texans to shop around, noting that nearly 160 companies sell home and auto coverage in the state.57

How the coverage differs

The outlets agree on the numbers. Nearly all of them repeat TDI's figures, and Fox's Texas stations say plainly that their story is based on the agency's news release.22 The difference is in how they describe what happened.

The Fox stations wrote that close to 4.4 million drivers "have seen their insurance rates drop."6 TDI said something narrower: insurers filed decreases "impacting" that many policyholders.4 KPRC in Houston was more careful. It noted that a filed decrease does not mean every customer's bill falls by the same amount, because premiums depend on the company, the property, the vehicle, the coverage chosen and the individual's risk.3

The careful version is the right one. TDI's own market overview explains the gap. A rate is the price per unit of exposure, such as $1,000 of home coverage. A premium is that rate multiplied by the amount of coverage.8 The average insured value of a Texas home rose from $252,000 in 2016 to $408,500 in 2024.8 So a homeowner whose insurer cuts its rate could still pay a higher premium if the home's insured value goes up at renewal.

The scale also matters. TDI counts about 8.2 million active homeowners policies.8 The decreases affect roughly 700,000 of them, or under a tenth of the market. The trend is real, but most Texas homeowners are not yet affected by it.

The size of the increases that came before

The cuts follow years of steep increases. TDI's data show average filed homeowners rate changes of 10.8% in 2022, 21.1% in 2023 and 18.7% in 2024, before slowing to 4.3% in 2025.8 The average annual homeowners premium rose from $1,987 in 2020 to $3,291 in 2024 and $3,489 in 2025.8 That is roughly 75% in five years.

A 4.3% cut on a $3,489 premium works out to about $150 a year. Doug Heller of the Consumer Federation of America made the same point about the national market: premiums rose so far, so fast, that even a slowdown leaves most homeowners paying far more than they did three or four years ago.

Estimates of what Texans actually pay vary widely, depending on who is measuring. A MoneyGeek analysis of quotes for a sample home put the statewide average near $6,700 a year. TDI's figure, based on actual policies, is about half that.8 The gap comes from method. One figure is quotes for a sample home profile; the other is what policyholders actually pay. TDI's number is the better guide to the market as a whole.

Why insurers can afford to cut

The reason for the cuts is clearest in claims payouts and underwriting results. In 2021, Texas homeowners insurers had a combined ratio of 141.8%, meaning they paid about $1.42 in claims and expenses for every dollar of premium. In 2023 the ratio was 105.1%. In 2024 it dropped to 98.3%, and in 2025 to 76.8%, the best result in TDI's ten-year table outside of 2018.8

Claims fell sharply. Paid hail losses were about $4.9 billion in both 2023 and 2024, then dropped to about $2.3 billion in 2025. Losses from wind and from water and freezing also fell.8

The likely explanation is that insurers raised prices to cover very high claims, then had a mild claims year, and that left room to lower rates. The trend appears to be continuing: TDI lists a 30-day average filed homeowners rate change of -6.6% for September 2026, a deeper cut than the 90-day figure.8

This also suggests the relief depends on the weather. Hail drives most homeowners claims in Texas. One industry analysis reports that homeowners in the most hail-prone ZIP codes have seen premiums rise 30% to 50% since 2021. The same analysis says insurers are stabilizing rates mainly in lower-risk areas such as West Texas, the Panhandle and rural counties. It says the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs and the Austin–San Antonio corridor are still seeing prices adjusted upward. It also cautions that a lower premium in a hail-prone area may come with narrower coverage.

The broader U.S. market shows the same slowdown. According to NerdWallet data cited in the analysis, the share of states where insurers were seeking rate increases fell from 81.6% in 2024 to 53.6% in 2026, and the median requested increase dropped from 10% to 1%.

Auto: slow relief after the peak

Auto prices show a similar pattern. Insurify's quote data put the average Texas full-coverage premium at about $2,705 in October 2024. It peaked near $2,761 in February 2025 and has fallen steadily since, to about $2,447 in September 2026. That is a decline of roughly 10% from the peak. Texas still costs more than the U.S. average, at $204 a month for full coverage compared with $187 nationally.

The auto filings fit that trend, though the cuts are not uniform across insurers. Loya's 10.3% cut is large, while Auto Club's 3% cut is modest.24 Carrier Management, an industry publication, also reports that vehicle thefts fell 21% in the first half of 2026, one of several factors that may be easing auto claims.1

Health insurance is moving the other way

The good news on property and casualty insurance does not extend to health coverage. Health premiums are being driven by medical costs and federal policy, not storms. For 2027, Texas's individual-market insurers have requested increases of about 13% to 14%. One count of 18 Texas carriers puts the median request at 12.96%.13 Healthinsurance.org puts the average at about 13.1%14, and ACA Signups, which weights by premium, puts it at about 14.1%, with small-group plans seeking 16.9%.15

The requests vary widely by insurer:

• UnitedHealthcare Benefits of Texas: about 34%
• Sendero Health Plans: about 31%
• Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas: 8.93%. BCBS offers about two-thirds of the plans in the state.13

All of these are requests and still need regulatory review.13

The increases come on top of an earlier jump. Average premiums before subsidies rose 34.7% in Texas for 2026.20 Federal enhanced premium tax credits also expired, and the average net Marketplace premium in Texas rose from $57 a month in 2025 to $89 in 2026, even though many enrollees switched to cheaper Bronze plans.20 Enrollment fell from more than 3.4 million to under 3.3 million.20

Nationally, KFF's review of preliminary filings found a median proposed increase of about 14% to 15% for 2027.1216 Insurers cite medical and drug costs rising around 10%, and they say healthier people leaving the market adds roughly four more percentage points.11 CNBC also points to GLP-1 drugs and consolidation among health care providers.16

What it means

The overall picture for Texas households is uneven. Home and auto insurers are filing modest cuts after collecting enough premium during the expensive years to make strong profits in a calmer claims year. Health insurers are raising prices again, and federal subsidies no longer cushion the increases.

TDI's figures are accurate, but the headlines describing them overstate the relief. A 4.3% average filed decrease affecting under a tenth of homeowners policies is a reversal of direction, not a reversal of the past four years. Its durability depends on the next hail season. Abbott's plan to curb premium increases in the next legislative session suggests state officials expect pressure on premiums to return.

For now, regulators and the trade coverage give the same practical advice. With insurers competing on price, homeowners and drivers who compare quotes and read their policy terms closely are the most likely to see real savings.3