US Finance and Insurance Sector NAICS 52

Oct 20, 2025 - Regulators Beginning to Address Soaring Insurance Rates

• Soaring insurance costs in the US have intensified regulatory scrutiny as premiums for home and auto coverage climb at record rates. According to S&P Global, homeowners’ premiums rose 12.7% in 2023 and another 10.4% in 2024, with the average policy reaching about $1,900 in 2023, up nearly 50% from pre-pandemic levels. Over 5.3 million US households now pay more than $4,000 annually for property insurance. Auto insurance followed a similar trend, increasing 8.4% in 2023 and an additional 17.8% in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rising claims from natural disasters, high repair costs, and tighter reinsurance markets have pushed insurers to seek steep rate hikes. But as affordability worsens, regulators in states like California, Florida, and Louisiana are pushing back, rejecting or capping increases and signaling a shift toward more active oversight of the insurance industry’s pricing practices.
• More working-class Americans are participating in the stock market, according to a recent survey from non-profits Commonwealth and the BlackRock Foundation. About 54% of individuals earning between $30,000 and $80,000 now hold taxable investment accounts, half of whom only entered the market in the past five years. Technological advances such as commission-free trading, mobile apps, and social media have lowered entry barriers to stock transactions. Many new investors are contributing significant amounts relative to their income, with 45% investing at least $5,000 and nearly 40% planning to hold their investments for ten years or longer. The trend has expanded market participation beyond wealthier households, but analysts caution that many of these investors entered during a strong bull market (S&P 500 returns have surged around 130% since 2020) leaving some potentially vulnerable if market conditions turn south.

• Amid a broader slowdown in US job growth, major Wall Street banks are aggressively hiring senior talent to ride a recent surge in corporate deal-making. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and equity-capital investment volume jumped about 40% globally during the summer, the best performance since 2021. Firms such as JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are pausing planned layoffs and aggressively courting senior-level bankers who can bring existing connections to the table to originate and close deals. Targeted industries include power generation, industrial manufacturing, and consumer and financial companies, per consulting firm Korn Ferry. Uncertainty about structural changes, though, could dampen optimism with banks investing heavily in AI and automation, which could displace some junior and mid-level roles over time. Overall, investment banking appears to be shifting from cost-cutting mode into growth mode, betting that M&A activity can sustain renewed industry expansion even as larger risks loom.
• Credit risk is on the rise in the US as delinquencies in auto loans and credit card payments have reached the highest levels of the decade, according to trade association America’s Credit Unions. Underwater auto loans have been flirting with pandemic-level defaults, and credit card delinquencies are the most they’ve been since The Great Recession. While the rise is significant, the delinquencies have nonetheless shown signs of stabilizing, but the trend worries leveraged credit unions. Consumer credit scores during and immediately after the pandemic were artificially inflated since loans at that time were practically interest-free. Government stimulus payments were used by many consumers to pay down debt, thus raising credit scores above 720 for many borrowers. Now, more than 20% of those borrowers have scores below 720 once debt accumulated again at higher interest rates. If the labor market continues to decline, experts expect delinquencies to rise even higher.