Key Takeaways
- Starting today, any Colorado insurer using a wildfire risk model, catastrophe model, or scoring method to price, non-renew, or surcharge a homeowners policy must share that score with you in writing — and explain what mitigation actions could lower it.
- The law requires insurers to factor property-specific and community-level mitigation into their risk calculations; if they don’t, they must offer discounts to policyholders who can document mitigation work.
- You can appeal your wildfire risk score directly to the insurer — and the insurer must acknowledge the appeal within 10 calendar days — but winning the appeal doesn’t cap your premium: it only makes the score more accurate.
- Colorado homeowners premiums roughly doubled from 2020 to 2025; this law creates transparency around why, but does not reduce the underlying wildfire and hail exposure that drove those increases.
Colorado’s HB25-1182 Is Live, Here’s What Changed at Midnight
Colorado homeowners got something new today: the legal right to see the number an insurer assigned to their wildfire risk, understand what built it, and formally challenge it if they believe it’s wrong. House Bill 25-1182, signed into law on May 28, 2025 and effective as of July 1, 2026, is the most significant change to wildfire insurance regulation in Colorado in decades, according to the Colorado General Assembly’s bill text and a joint statement from bill sponsors released this week.
The law is not optional and it doesn’t apply only to new policies. Starting today, any insurer that uses a wildfire risk model, a catastrophe model, or any scoring method to underwrite, price, non-renew, or surcharge a homeowners policy in Colorado must follow new disclosure requirements. That covers the overwhelming majority of admitted carriers writing in the state, because virtually all of them use some form of catastrophe or wildfire scoring model in their underwriting.
Here’s what the law actually requires. Insurers must provide written notice at application, renewal, or non-renewal that includes the policyholder’s wildfire risk score or classification, the range of possible scores, and a plain-language explanation of what mitigation actions could change that score. Insurers must also incorporate property-specific mitigation, documented fire-resistant materials, defensible space, ember-resistant vents, Class A roofing, into their risk models or, if their models don’t accommodate that, provide discounts to policyholders who can document the work. Policyholders can appeal their score directly to the insurer. The insurer must acknowledge the appeal within 10 calendar days.
The Colorado Division of Insurance, which oversees property and casualty carriers in the state, has rulemaking authority to implement and enforce the law. What the Division has not yet announced publicly is precisely how it intends to audit whether carriers are actually incorporating mitigation into their models versus offering a nominal discount instead, a distinction that matters enormously for policyholders who have spent real money hardening their properties.
What the Law Does, and What It Doesn’t Do
Before celebrating, Colorado homeowners need to understand the ceiling here. HB25-1182 creates transparency. It does not cap premiums. It does not require insurers to write policies in wildfire-exposed areas they’ve decided to exit. It does not mandate that a favorable appeal result in a lower bill, it mandates only that the score used reflects reality more accurately.
Colorado homeowners insurance premiums roughly doubled from 2020 to 2025, driven by wildfire exposure, hail losses that account for 26% to 54% of an annual homeowners premium according to the Colorado Division of Insurance’s own analysis, and years of carriers pricing based on map-level risk zones rather than individual property characteristics. The law addresses the transparency problem. The underlying cost driver is the actual risk, and no disclosure requirement changes what hailstorms or the Marshall Fire did to carrier loss ratios in the state.
For policyholders who have invested in mitigation, ember-resistant vents, Class A roofing, defensible space clearance, and watched their premium climb anyway, the appeal pathway is real and worth using. The law requires that insurers consider documented mitigation when scoring properties. If your property has completed mitigation work but your score doesn’t reflect it, that’s precisely the scenario the statute addresses. Document everything before you contact your carrier: photos, dated invoices, inspection reports, and any community-level certifications like Firewise USA participation. Under HB25-1182, the insurer must consider only what is verifiable.
The catastrophe model disclosure element is worth taking seriously as a systemic matter. When a carrier uses a third-party wildfire model, outputs from providers like CoreLogic or Verisk drive most wildfire scoring in the admitted market, it must now share that output with the policyholder. For years, I’ve watched clients get non-renewal notices with no explanation beyond “your property no longer meets our underwriting standards.” What that actually meant, nine times out of ten, was that a model update had reclassified their ZIP code or their specific property’s exposure. The carrier didn’t have to say which model, which version, or what changed. Colorado homeowners now have the right to know. That’s not nothing.
The practical implication for rate filings is significant too. HB25-1182 requires insurers to submit model data to the Colorado Division of Insurance as part of their rate filings. That means the Division’s actuarial staff can now evaluate whether the catastrophe model a carrier is relying on to justify a rate increase actually produces the loss estimates the carrier claims. Before this law, Colorado was essentially in the same position California was before the Sustainable Insurance Strategy: carriers could cite model output in SERFF filings without regulators having any direct access to the underlying model data. That dynamic just changed.
The law has a referendum safety valve: if a petition had been filed within 90 days of the Colorado General Assembly’s final adjournment, the law would have been delayed pending a November 2026 vote. As of today, no such petition has been reported. The law is in effect.
What Colorado Homeowners Should Do Right Now
If you’re in Colorado and your renewal is coming up in the next 60 to 90 days, the timing matters. Your insurer’s first obligation to provide the new-format written notice arises at the time of your next renewal or non-renewal. Renewals already in the pipeline before today may not have been generated with the new disclosure requirements. Ask your agent or carrier directly: does my renewal notice include my wildfire risk score under HB25-1182? If not, request it.
If you’ve received a non-renewal notice recently, the appeal right applies. The statute requires the insurer to acknowledge your appeal within 10 calendar days. That’s a hard deadline. Missing an appeal window can leave you scrambling for replacement coverage in a market where Colorado homeowners in Boulder County, El Paso County, and along the I-70 corridor have already watched premiums climb 150% to 300% in recent years, with some paying over $8,000 annually for coverage that would have cost a fraction of that five years ago.
For the roughly 57.9% premium increase Colorado homeowners absorbed between 2018 and 2023, mostly driven by wildfire and hail, today’s law doesn’t reverse a dollar of it. What it does is end the situation where a homeowner who spent $15,000 hardening their property got the same renewal letter as their neighbor who did nothing. That gap has existed for years in Colorado. It closes today.
For a broader look at how home insurance rates vary by state and what’s driving them, and to compare the best home insurance companies writing in Colorado’s tightening market, those comparisons carry more weight now that the pricing models behind them are becoming visible.
