[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] - Mike Causey wants a third term as Commissioner of Insurance.

He took office in 2017.

You're the only Republican to ever win Insurance Commissioner, and you join us now.

It's good to see you again, sir.

- Thank you, Kelly.

It's good to be here.

Thanks for having me.

- We've done this three times now with you as commissioner or as candidate and both, every time we meet the state's larger and influx of new state voters are here.

They have to look down this ballot.

Your name's on there.

Who are you?

What's your background?

And tell us more about yourself.

- Well, I'm a lifelong farmer.

I'm a Guilford County native from rural North Carolina.

Really just outside of Greensboro, but I grew up on a dirt road produce farm and as a kid I helped in the fields growing produce and learned how to drive a tractor at a probably five years old.

And just love that lifestyle is where I still live today.

I went through the public schools, went through to Wake Tech, studied engineering, civil engineering technology, have an associate's degree from there, and served in the United States Army Military Police School and also played in the Army band and came back home and worked as a field engineer in the construction industry.

Went back to college at UNC Charlotte, studied engineering, got recruited into the insurance business.

And my career was mostly in the insurance field as an agent, agency manager, superintendent of agencies.

So I know the insurance business well from all levels.

And then went back to college and got a degree in business administration and went through MBA studies and taken numerous courses in insurance and leadership management Purdue University Insurance Management Institute, and had been active in the Republican politics all my life.

But I grew up in a staunch Democratic family.

So I know North Carolina and I know the North Carolina political landscape.

And I have enjoyed my eight years serving the people as insurance commissioner.

- In a state that's increasingly seeing its cities get larger and some of the more rural areas become less populated.

You're still proud of your background, but how do you mesh growing up, rural as a farmer, owning a farmer's market with going to college, training, going into the business world, and then basing your career now out of Raleigh?

- Well, I started in the insurance business in Charlotte, so I, for 12 years I was active in the Charlotte community.

I was active in civic clubs in the Hornet's Nest Kiwanis Club, active in the Life Underwriters Charlotte Life Underwriters Association.

So got to know the city of Charlotte well, but still connected to my rural background and rural roots and having worked in Raleigh for decades, I've enjoyed both sides.

- Let's get down to business now.

Sure.

- Commissioner.

How's insurance market, especially for property and car insurance, how has it changed since Covid?

- It is changed in that you still have more Zoom and virtual meetings than we once had prior to Covid.

And it changed the business model of many businesses where they saw that they could save money by not having as many in-person meetings.

Although I prefer the in-person meetings when possible.

But we are lucky in North Carolina to have a safe and healthy insurance market compared to many other states.

And we do have a very hard, what they call a hard insurance market.

Many insurance companies do not want to write homeowners insurance is it has not been profitable for many insurance companies.

But when it comes to automobile insurance, Forbes Advisory Services did a study for 2023 and says North Carolina actually is number five, the fifth lowest in the United States when it comes to car insurance.

And that speaks very highly for North Carolina.

The only states with lower average automobile insurance rates are Idaho, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire and Ohio.

- Why is that?

What about those four states or five states makes North Carolina behind them, but ahead of so many others?

- Well, if you look at those, most of those are low population states other than Ohio.

And I think it's because we have hundreds of insurance companies willing to write automobile insurance and people have a lot of choices.

We have a number of insurance companies based right here in North Carolina.

And so in this we have a system that's different.

It gets criticized.

The North Carolina Rate Bureau was created by the legislature back in 1977.

So we're a rate bureau state and regardless of who the insurance commissioner is, the insurance commissioner has to operate under state statute according to what the legislature set forth.

- Is the property market in North Carolina weak, you've said it is unprofitable.

Why would any company wanna offer dwelling policies under such a scenario?

- Well, I think they do better in North Carolina than they do some other states, but there's a number of factors.

You look at the storms, the hailstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes that we've experienced.

It's created a large number of claims, but inflation is a huge factor that it's affects all sides of business.

But you also have fraud.

There's a tremendous amount of insurance fraud that is driving up our insurance premiums.

And we see that, especially after a storm when we have hurricanes or tornadoes, we have these, some con artists, they come in from outta state, they go door to door, they offer to give you a free roof.

And so we are very aggressive at the Department of Insurance in fighting insurance fraud and doing everything we can to hold down insurance rates and at the same time having a level of playing field and even handed enforcement.

So insurance companies will want to do business here.

- How close is North Carolina to experiencing what policy holders are experiencing in California and Florida where companies just pull out and refuse to do business, which would leads people in a lurch?

- Well, I don't think we're anywhere close to that.

I mean, you look at the problems they're having in Florida and California and some of those other states.

It is a serious issue and there's tremendous pressure already to raise insurance rates.

And as commissioner, my job is to protect consumers.

- In protecting consumers.

This is one question I have 'cause all of us pay insurance, what's an acceptable amount of rate increase?

Some candidates in the past have said no increases under any circumstances.

Some worry that increases are gonna be too much.

How do you balance that out?

Because we want the insurance company to be there if we need them, but we also want low rates that might be unsustainable.

- That's right.

And it is a balancing act.

But you, of course, nobody wants any increase, but you don't want to increase in your groceries, you don't want to increase at the fuel pump.

But we've seen, especially over the last few years, we've seen tremendous damage because of inflation.

People cannot stand fuel prices at $4.

And we had diesel fuel in Guilford County the other day at $5 a gallon.

And that hurts farmers.

It hurts truckers, it hurts all businesses.

And I do not buy into this push to force everybody to drive electric vehicles people should have choices, but we need to be energy independent.

We need low energy prices that's the best cure for inflation.

- As insurance Commissioner, is it part of any commissioner's job to advocate for any kind of policies with the legislature?

Are you there to just interpret what the legislature would like for the commissioner to do?

And I say that because you have the Rate Bureau, it's sort of an anomaly in America and how rates are set more free market.

Does the Rate Bureau do the job as intended in 1977 as well today?

- There's all different views and the insurance industry is divided.

You have some insurance companies that don't wanna change a thing.

They like the Rate Bureau system and there's other companies that would like to do away with the Rate Bureau and just have a totally free market system.

And then other companies that would like a combination of free Market and Rate Bureau.

And what we have done in my eight years, we have worked with the Rate Bureau and the legislature to give insurance companies more freedom and more flexibility and more free market choices to go around the Rate Bureau in some cases.

And that has helped to some extent.

But you can't argue with the success of North Carolina over the decades that we have been a pretty strong stable insurance market and the Rate Bureau system has worked well.

I don't see any appetite in the legislature to do away with the Rate Bureau or make drastic changes.

I think the system we have now is working well and there's certainly some tweaks that need to be made and we'll work on those.

- What is the proper relationship between a department of insurance and any insurance company that does business here?

Are you their partner?

Are you their colleague?

Or are you their watchdog and adversary?

- We're regulators, so we're certainly not opposed to the insurance companies, but my job is to protect consumers, but I have to follow state law.

And state law says the first job of the insurance commissioner is to make sure the rates are adequate.

Now, when you talk about rate adequacy, that means insurance companies have to charge enough rate so they have the money to pay claims.

It's not gonna do you any good as consumer if you're paying premiums, an insurance company cannot pay claims.

The other thing the insurance commissioners directed to make sure the rates requested are not excessive or not unfairly discriminatory to any area of the state.

And that's what I've been doing.

- In the practical sense, how much voice does the ordinary person have out there when they write you Rate Bureau comes up, we know you're going...

The companies are asking for an increase.

Do people have a voice?

- Yes.

- How, much does it influence the negotiation?

- Oh, they have a strong voice.

Every time there's a rate request height, I get thousands and thousands of letters, emails from consumers and it makes a huge difference.

These comments are for public record.

They go to legislators, they go the rate Bureau sees those also.

It's very important for people to let their voice be heard.

- Commissioner Causey, you are the Republican nominee for Commissioner of Insurance in North Carolina.

As always, good to have you in the studio.

Thank you for being on state lines in the past and hope you'll come back.

Safe travels.

Good luck on the campaign trails.

A lot of mileage there.

- Thank you Kelly.

Appreciate you having me.

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