➤ North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey plans to create a cross-industry task force to help North Carolinians access more affordable property insurance.

➤ Causey said the National Flood Insurance Program is an "important" program but it needs reform.

➤ The North Carolina regulator plans to expand the office's criminal investigation division to deal with insurance fraud cases.

Republican North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey was just reelected for a third term in a state that was recently devastated by Hurricane Helene. While Causey saw some controversy and clashed with fellow Republicans in his second term, he secured reelection with 52.2% of the vote.

S&P Global Market Intelligence recently caught up with Causey to talk about his priorities for the next term, flood insurance, recovery from Hurricane Helene and a host of other issues. During the interview, Causey also shared that he plans to ask Congress to eliminate the Federal Insurance Office. This was covered in a separate story, linked here. The following conversation was edited and condensed for clarity.

S&P Global Market Intelligence: Now that you've been elected to office again, what are your top priorities?

Causey: First, I want to continue helping the people in western North Carolina that we've been helping since Hurricane Helene. We've been on the ground every day. We have a couple of insurance camps or insurance villages where we had the major insurance companies come in to assist folks with claims on the ground, working side by side with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to get emergency assistance.

We're also very proud of our SHIIP program, the Seniors Health Insurance Information Program. We're one of the leaders in the country, and I'd like to work with Congress to get additional federal grant money for SHIIP. I think it needs to be better funded.

In the past two terms we expanded our law enforcement capabilities to aggressively fight insurance fraud, and I'd like to continue expanding the criminal investigation division. We have a legal prosecution team, which is comprised of experienced prosecutors that work with district attorneys in all 100 counties in the state. That has been a game changer because instead of these insurance fraud cases lingering for two or three years on a court docket, our prosecutors get it moved quickly.

What have you learned from dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene?

In my opinion [it] is the worst disaster that's ever hit North Carolina. We've certainly seen some terrible storms; we had Hurricane Florence in 2018, which left 23 southeastern counties underwater. We learned a lot from Florence, mainly that very few people had flood insurance, so we started going around the state with flood insurance classes educating the public and increasing the amount of flood insurance policies. But we still need not only a legislative focus at the state level but efforts on the federal to help expand the number of people that have flood insurance because too few people have it.

Do you feel like the National Flood Insurance Program needs to be reformed or should it be eliminated?

It's an important program, but I think it's in debt. The solution would be to get more people signed up under that program because there are not enough people signing up, and those that are getting coverage are high risk. There is too shallow of a risk pool there. I think it may need some reform, but we need Congress to encourage more people to participate in NFIP. We also have private flood insurance in North Carolina, and we'd like to see more insurance companies offering that coverage to give the consumers a choice. If they want to go within NFIP, that's fine, but they could get better coverage and probably more comprehensive coverage under a private flood insurance plan. But we certainly need to keep the NFIP and get it on solid financial footing.

Were you were pleased with FEMA's assistance for this disaster in North Carolina?

The folks here on the ground were very nice. The problem I saw was that we did not have enough people on the ground.

I've heard a lot of criticism about FEMA, about their slowness to respond. The experience that we've had over the years is a good working relationship with FEMA. They've been very helpful to us. But I still am aware that there are a lot of homeowners that are very disappointed in the length of time it takes, the red tape, all of that. I will say FEMA has already extended the deadline for assistance to Jan. 7, 2025, so that'll be a big help.

What plans do you have to make sure North Carolinians have access to affordable property insurance rates?

We're working diligently to encourage more insurance carriers to come into North Carolina to write business. We're also doing what we can to encourage insurance companies already writing in North Carolina to write in the whole state, not pick and choose the areas of the state in which they want to write. We need many companies offering commercial insurance in the coastal counties. In some counties we only have two or three companies that even want to write commercial insurance business.

We're creating a task force to work with business owners, real estate agents and insurance agents, and setting up meetings with CEOs of some insurance companies, to see what they need from us in order to come in and write business in some of these areas. We need to split the risk. We can't have one company taking all of it.

Back in 2018 you worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigations and wore a wire to help convict former insurance and private equity executive Greg Lindberg of political bribery. More recently, he pled guilty to federal criminal charges, including money laundering. Did your office have any hand in helping to convict him of those charges?

We certainly worked with the authorities on that, but the prosecution and all that was out of our hands. I was very pleased with the outcome. My concern is for the policyholders, and they're still waiting to get their money back. Hopefully there are assets to help folks get reimbursed.