What could be done to lower insurance rates in Georgia?

Georgia voters will elect an Insurance Commissioner this November, but most residents couldn’t tell you what the office actually does.

That’s a problem, because the person in that job has enormous influence over what Georgians pay for car insurance, homeowners coverage, and health premiums—or at least, they could have that influence if Georgia’s system worked like some other states.

With Georgians seeing a spike in rates across the board for all types of insurance, voters will want to pay close attention to this little-known state office.

Right now, Georgia’s insurance regulation sits somewhere in the middle of the pack nationally. The state has real consumer protections on the books, but it lacks some of the most powerful tools other states use to hold down premiums and fight for policyholders.

As voters prepare to cast ballots in a race that rarely gets headlines, here’s what Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner can and can’t do—and how that compares to the rest of the country.

How Georgia picks its insurance regulator

Georgia is one of only 11 states that elect their insurance commissioner, according to Ballotpedia. The other 39 states appoint the position, usually through the governor.

That means Georgia voters have direct say over who runs insurance regulation. But the structure of the office itself determines how much power that person actually wields.

What makes Georgia different

Georgia’s Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner handles more than just insurance. The same agency oversees statewide fire safety, arson investigations, and building inspections.

That dual mission doesn’t necessarily make the office weaker, but it does mean leadership attention and resources are split between insurance regulation and fire-safety enforcement—a combination most states don’t use.

The bigger difference is how Georgia regulates insurance rates.

The rate regulation gap

According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Georgia uses what’s called a “file-and-use” system for most property and casualty insurance.

Here’s what that means in practice: insurance companies can file new rates with the state and start using them after a waiting period. The commissioner can review those rates and disapprove them later, but the burden is on the regulator to act after the fact.

Georgia law requires the commissioner to examine any rate filing that increases premiums by more than 25 percent. For increases between 10 and 25 percent, examination is optional.

The standard written into state law says rates cannot be “excessive, inadequate, or unfairly discriminatory.” But proving that after rates are already in use is different from blocking them before they take effect.

What other states do instead

California’s system, created by Proposition 103 in 1988, works the opposite way.

For auto and homeowners insurance, California requires prior approval before companies can use new rates. That means insurers have to prove their rates are justified before customers start paying them.

California also built a formal public process around rate cases. Rate filings trigger public notice and hearing procedures. Outside consumer groups can participate in rate cases and recover their costs if they make a meaningful contribution to the outcome.

The result is an adversarial system where rate increases get scrutinized and often reduced before they hit policyholders, rather than reviewed after the damage is done.

Georgia’s file-and-use framework doesn’t work that way. Rate changes can take effect first, with review coming later—if it comes at all. Georgia prides itself on being a business-friendly state, and the insurance commissioner’s office has often lived with the reputation of looking out for businesses before consumers.

The missing consumer advocate

Some states don’t just rely on the insurance commissioner to represent consumers. They create a separate office whose only job is to fight for policyholders.

Florida law requires appointment of a Consumer Advocate to represent the public before the insurance department. That advocate has the power to request administrative hearings to challenge rate decisions.

Texas goes even further. The state’s Office of Public Insurance Counsel is an independent agency created by statute specifically to represent insurance consumers’ interests. It’s not part of the insurance department—it’s a counterweight to it.

The idea is simple: someone needs to be paid to say “no” and to test the assumptions in insurance company filings. In those states, that someone isn’t the same person who has to maintain working relationships with the industry.

Georgia’s Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner has a Consumer Services Division that investigates complaints between consumers and insurers. But Georgia doesn’t operate a Texas-style independent public counsel devoted to litigating the consumer position in rate proceedings.

The transparency problem

Transparency doesn’t automatically lower premiums, but it changes the political environment around rate decisions.

Florida provides a public-facing search system that lets anyone look up, view, and download insurance rate and form filings. New York has similar portals tied to its prior-approval process.

Connecticut posts health insurance rate filings and decisions online and allows public comment on requested rates. Oregon holds public hearings for individual and small employer health plan rate requests.

Georgia points consumers to SERFF, the national insurance filing database, and to federal health insurance rate postings. But the state doesn’t operate a consumer-friendly portal that centralizes filings, summaries, objections, and outcomes the way some states do.

Finding out what insurance companies are asking for—and what the commissioner decided—requires knowing where to look and how to navigate industry databases.

Watching how insurers behave

Rate regulation is only half the story. The other half is making sure insurance companies treat customers fairly when it comes time to pay claims.

Washington state publishes market conduct examination reports in a searchable database going back years. Those exams look at how insurers handle claims, underwriting, cancellations, and nonrenewals.

Making those reports public serves as a deterrent. Insurers know abusive practices will show up in a document anyone can read.

Georgia conducts market conduct exams, but the state doesn’t make public reporting of those exams a priority the way Washington does. Georgia law actually gives the commissioner discretion to withhold exam/investigation reports from public inspection and also provides strong confidentiality protections for exam-related materials

The health insurance difference

Most states review health insurance premiums mainly to make sure the math adds up. Rhode Island does something more aggressive.

Rhode Island’s Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner explicitly uses rate review as a cost-control tool. The state has tied premium approval to affordability standards linked to hospital price growth caps.

The approach targets a root cause of high premiums—medical prices—rather than just checking whether insurers did their actuarial homework correctly.

Georgia regulates health insurance products and filings, but the state doesn’t use Rhode Island-style affordability standards that condition approval on medical cost containment.

What Georgia’s system can and can’t do

Georgia’s insurance commissioner has real authority. The office investigates consumer complaints, prosecutes fraud, and enforces standards written into state law.

But the commissioner’s ability to hold down premiums is heavily shaped by Georgia’s rate-regulation design and by the absence of pressure mechanisms other states use.

Georgia doesn’t have California’s prior-approval system with public rate hearings. It doesn’t have Texas or Florida’s independent consumer advocate. It doesn’t have Florida or Connecticut’s centralized public filing portals. It doesn’t have Washington’s aggressive public reporting of market conduct exams. And it doesn’t have Rhode Island’s affordability-based health premium regulation.

Those aren’t just bureaucratic details. They’re the difference between a system designed to let the market work with light-touch oversight and a system designed to put the burden of proof on insurers before they can raise rates. They’re the difference in if the insurance commissioner’s office exists to help insurance companies or consumers.