If you own a home in Hawaii and have tried to renew your homeowners insurance in the past two years, you already know something is wrong. Premiums that doubled overnight. Non-renewal notices arriving in the mail with 45 days to find a new carrier. Brokers telling you that the company that insured your property for twenty years simply no longer writes policies on your island. This is not bad luck — it is a structural shift, and it is accelerating.
Why Carriers Are Withdrawing From Hawaii
The Hawaii insurance market has always carried unusual risk. The islands sit in the Central Pacific hurricane belt, contain the world's most active shield volcano, have extensive coastal exposure on every island, and have seen wildfire destroy thousands of acres of dry leeward land. None of that is new. What changed is that the math behind underwriting those risks stopped working for national carriers.
Reinsurance costs — the wholesale market that insurers use to spread their own risk — increased sharply after back-to-back catastrophic loss years on the mainland. Carriers who absorbed large wildfire losses in California, hurricane losses in Florida, and severe convective storm losses across the Gulf had to either raise rates nationwide or stop writing in the highest-exposure states. Hawaii, with its combination of lava, flood, wind, and wildfire exposure, became one of the first candidates for withdrawal.
The August 2023 Lahaina wildfire deepened the calculation. The fire killed at least 100 people and destroyed more than 2,700 structures, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century. Insurance payouts from Lahaina alone ran into the billions. Carriers that had already been questioning their Hawaii exposure used the event as a trigger to accelerate their exit.
Which Counties Are Most Exposed
Maui County
Maui County has experienced the sharpest deterioration in carrier availability. The Lahaina fire drew intense scrutiny to wildland-urban interface properties across West Maui, Kihei, Haiku, and upcountry Makawao. Even properties that were never threatened by the 2023 fire are now receiving non-renewal notices if they fall into Moderate or High wildfire risk tiers as mapped by the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization. Many policies have seen premiums increase 40 to 80 percent on renewal.
Hawaii County (Big Island)
The Big Island presents a problem unique in the United States: active lava flow. Properties in USGS Lava Hazard Zones 1 and 2 — the lower Puna district, including Leilani Estates and surrounding subdivisions — became nearly uninsurable after the 2018 Kilauea Lower East Rift Zone eruption destroyed over 700 homes. Many of those properties were rebuilt, only to find that obtaining coverage required accessing surplus lines carriers at significantly higher rates. Properties in Zones 3 and 4 have also seen tightening availability as carriers reassess their entire Big Island exposure.
Oahu
Oahu has fared better than the neighbor islands because its lava hazard is negligible and its wildfire risk, while real in dry leeward areas like Ewa and Waianae, is lower than Maui or the Big Island. However, coastal properties along the North Shore, Kailua, and Kane'ohe face tightening flood and hurricane wind underwriting, particularly for structures built before current hurricane-strap requirements took effect. Non-renewals have increased, but carrier availability remains broader than on Maui or Hawaii Island.
Kauai
Kauai sits in a high-rainfall environment that has historically translated into significant flood exposure. The 2018 Hanalei flood destroyed dozens of homes and displaced hundreds of residents. North Shore and East Side properties face the highest scrutiny from flood underwriters, and some carriers have stopped writing new policies in Special Flood Hazard Areas on the island entirely.
What the Hawaii Insurance Commissioner Has Done
The Hawaii Insurance Division regulates what carriers can charge and how much notice they must give before a non-renewal. State law requires at least 45 days advance notice for a non-renewal and 10 days for a cancellation. The Commissioner has issued guidance encouraging carriers to work with policyholders, but rate regulation in Hawaii has historically been less strict than in states like California, meaning carriers have more flexibility to raise premiums to market-rate levels — or leave entirely.
The legislature has held hearings on the crisis, and there have been proposals to expand the Hawaii Property Insurance Association (HPIA) — the state's insurer of last resort — to take on more capacity. As of mid-2026, the most consequential change for homeowners in the private market has been the slow exit of mid-tier regional carriers, which formerly offered more competitive pricing than either the standard market or the HPIA.
The Hawaii FAIR Plan: Last Resort Coverage
The Hawaii Property Insurance Association, commonly called the FAIR Plan, is the state-backed insurer of last resort. If no private carrier will write your property, the FAIR Plan must accept you. Coverage is available for dwelling, other structures, and personal property, but there are coverage caps, exclusions, and typically higher premiums than the private market.
Getting placed on the FAIR Plan does not mean you are stuck there forever, but it does mean you need to document that you made a good-faith effort to find private coverage first. Brokers typically require written declinations from a minimum number of private carriers before they can submit a FAIR Plan application on your behalf. This is where having a documented risk profile matters: a broker who knows your lava zone, flood zone, and wildfire score before making calls can target the right surplus lines carriers first, rather than wasting time on companies that will never write your property regardless of price.
How Knowing Your Risk Profile Changes the Conversation
Every underwriter who looks at your property is going to pull the same data: your USGS lava hazard zone, your FEMA flood zone designation and base flood elevation, your distance from the coastline, your wildfire risk tier from HIEMA or HWMO, and your hurricane wind design speed under ASCE 7-16. If you do not know these numbers before you call a broker, you are going into the conversation blind. Worse, you might spend days pursuing carriers who will never quote you because of a data point you did not know about.
A property in Lava Zone 2 is simply not going to get standard-market lava coverage from most carriers, regardless of how well-built the structure is. A property inside a FEMA VE zone with a base flood elevation of 12 feet is going to trigger mandatory flood insurance requirements that will affect your total cost of ownership. A wildfire score of "Extreme" from HWMO is going to land on the desk of every underwriter who opens your file. Knowing these facts before you make the first call lets you have a productive conversation instead of a series of rejections.
This is exactly what a Hawaii Insurability Brief documents: your property's exact position across all seven risk dimensions, each value cited to the authoritative public source with a retrieval timestamp, plus three sentences in underwriter language that a broker can paste directly into a quote application. It is the research a knowledgeable buyer or broker would do anyway — consolidated into one document, for one address, delivered within 60 minutes.
Practical Steps If You Received a Non-Renewal Notice
If you have received a non-renewal notice, the 45-day window your carrier is required to give you is workable — but only if you move in the right sequence.
First, pull your property's risk data so you know exactly what you are working with. Then contact an independent broker — not a captive agent who represents only one carrier — who specializes in high-risk Hawaii properties. Independent brokers have access to the surplus lines market, which is where most Hawaii properties ultimately land. Give your broker the risk data upfront. Ask them to target surplus lines carriers before approaching the FAIR Plan. Keep a log of every declination in writing; you may need it for a FAIR Plan application.
For a more detailed step-by-step guide, see our article on what to do after a non-renewal notice in Hawaii.