Pastor Ben is the kind of leader who keeps his eye on the church budget and expenses as he moves through the year. As he is looking at the latest month's report he is utterly confused why the premium increases for their property insurance have skyrocketed so much.
His Lubbock church building is aging, and he knows that is not ideal for insurance policies. But he doesn't think that the weather in Lubbock is that bad. They haven't had a tornado in their neighborhood and most of the hail storms have not touched them.
Ben is feeling a real sense of pressure. He's worried because he isn't sure how his church can afford the massive property insurance costs and still perform routine maintenance to keep the building in tip-top shape.
That is money that should be going to ministry, not to an insurance carrier. He is desperately trying to understand why it is happening so that he can try to help the church determine a course of action. This isn't just a budget issue; it is a mission issue.
The New Normal: The "Weather Tax"
Pastor Ben’s frustration is completely justified. This isn't a problem unique to Lubbock; it is a new reality for churches all across Texas. You see the massive premium spikes, but you don't necessarily see the forces causing them.
This isn't just about local inflation; it is about a new, macro-economic reality that has created what we call the Weather Tax on properties in Texas that has been created by weather-related disasters across the country. The national trend of the amount spent just on extreme weather disasters is taking a huge chunk of the US economy.
Insurance claims involving big weather are not just a Texas problem. It's a nationwide church insurance company problem that is hitting the budgets of churches all across Texas. Every time we endure another billion-dollar natural disaster storm, the cost gets passed down to your property coverage. That is why Bloomberg showed how much of our GDP growth is due to these increases in the graph.
To give Pastor Ben and his church a clear path forward, they need a proactive plan. The entire premise of our book, The Promise of Certainty, is built around this path. Our three-phase assessment and plan is a comprehensive way to manage this new reality and develop a smart course of action for your church's future in light of the three reasons that are causing this growth in weather disaster spending.
The Exponential Rise in Claim Frequency (More Storms)
The first, and most straightforward, reason your premium is soaring is a simple game of statistics. The overall number of church insurance claims is going up.
Texas has always been home to extreme weather like tornadoes. But the frequency of severe events is noticeably higher now. We are talking about the fact that the actual number of storms hitting in Texas is causing insurance carriers to pay more storm claims every year. When claims payments rise across the board, the only way for these carriers to stay solvent is to increase the premium for the entire risk pool.
This phenomenon has a greater impact on churches in areas like Lubbock since there are more hail storms in the Panhandle than there are in Central Texas. Even if your church hasn't filed a claim recently, the fact that you sit in a high-frequency zone means your exposure is higher than ever before. This is something that Pastor Ben can understand.
The Spike in Claim Severity (Bigger Storms)
It is bad enough that the convective storms are coming more often, but the problem is compounded because those storms are also much larger in scope. The storms that are happening more frequently are also far more severe, hitting larger portions of Texas' population at once.
This is a massive issue for insurance companies. They can handle one small, isolated event. But when huge hail or devastating wind events sweep across multiple major cities, it strains their financial reserves immediately. These bigger, costlier events mean that every individual property loss is more complex and more expensive to resolve.
This spike in claim severity signals higher risk to the entire market. Church insurance companies react by tightening insurance coverage terms and raising prices dramatically. They are trying to protect themselves from the next multi-billion-dollar event. Ben didn't like this, but he also couldn't dispute it since more Texans are living in large metropolitan areas.
The Rebuilding Gap (Post-Disaster Cost Inflation)
This is the sneaky killer that shocks church leaders during the claim filing process. We are all tired of how much everything costs. Pastor Ben easily understands that it all costs more today. But it goes beyond that.
When a major weather event hits Lubbock, it causes an immediate and lasting spike in demand for construction materials and labor. Suddenly, every contractor is busy, and the price of roofing materials and specialized labor skyrockets. This increase in construction costs makes the claim payments even larger.
Your church property insurance carrier knows this, so they raise your premium to match these payouts. And if you do not have the right property coverage, you can have a rebuilding gap that can leave your church budget with a huge hole that has to be filled by reserver funds intended for other projects.
Your Path to Certainty and a Course of Action
Pastor Ben knows he needs a course of action that is stronger than simply shopping for the lowest price. The value of insurance comes when it is time to make a claim, and you can't ask for grace after the fact.
Managing the macro-forces we've mentioned requires the specialized expertise found in the methodology of The Promise of Certainty. It is a forward-looking strategy that accounts for today and looks to anticipate what you will need in the future. That is why True Texas Church Insurance is the tactical solution to the plan identified.
To overcome the Weather Tax, you need a local church insurance specialist who uses True Texas Church Insurance after you complete the necessary risk assessment. That system answers Ben's questions and measures his current risk profile against the reality of today's church insurance market.
Over the last 18 months, hundreds of Texas churches have asked our experienced team of experts why premiums have gone up so much and are not coming back down. When we explain the three issues and show them a path to a customized solution to their needs, they can breathe a sigh of relief.
Ready to get the right insurance for your church property? Click the button to get the right property policy for your church so that you can have The Promise of Certainty.