What Grade Did Your State Get On Its Report Card This Year?

The Heartland Institute recently issued its 2011 Property and Casualty Insurance report card.  Their stated purpose is to answer two questions:

• How free are consumers to choose the property and casualty products they want?
• How free are insurers to provide the property and casualty insurance products consumers say they want?

The institute’s byline is “Free Market Solutions,” if you didn’t already know or guess, and if a free market is your thing you’ll be happy to know that they are seeing a, “…real trend towards more freedom for consumers and businesses in the homeowners’ and automobile insurance realms.”  Nonetheless it doesn’t look like they’ll be accused of grade inflation, with only four states receiving a grade of “A.”

The Institute’s methodology is to assign numerical scores based on nine different criteria.  I won’t list them all, but they include such things as regulatory clarity, the extent of residual homeowners and auto markets within the state, and the attitude toward credit scoring. 

In addition to assigning grades to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the report card includes a brief review of some of 2010’s major events as seen by the author, including the role of federal government in insurance, and the evolution of coastal insurance markets.

The author makes a point of saying that the report card focuses on regulatory environments, not regulators, and that the grades are meant to be neither an endorsement of nor an attack upon any state’s insurance department.  That is likely a small consolation to those at the bottom of the scale.

So, what do you think your state got on its report card?  Do you agree or disagree?  What about the scoring criteria, do you think it’s fair?  Let us know.