What happened: A Pennsylvania bill would strip insurers of investigation extensions on homeowners’ disaster claims
Who’s involved: Pennsylvania General Assembly, homeowners’ insurers
What’s at stake: Claims-handling timelines and compliance obligations after federally declared disasters
Why it matters: Adjusters and claims teams would lose the flexibility to extend investigations when catastrophe volume spikes
Where it stands: Introduced October 21, 2026, and referred to the House Insurance Committee
After a disaster, insurers typically get extra time to investigate homeowners’ claims. A new Pennsylvania bill would scrap that entirely.
House Bill 2876, known as the Fair Assistance Insurance Responsibility (FAIR) Act, was introduced on October 21 by Rep. Guenst and 12 co-sponsors - Sanchez, Cerrato, Hill-Evans, Madden, Kinkead, Probst, McNeill, Kazeem, Parker, Malagari, Rivera and D. Williams - and referred to the House Committee on Insurance the same day.
The bill would do two things. It would require insurers to tell policyholders about the Pennsylvania Insurance Department’s consumer complaint process - and how to access it - within 10 business days of receiving a disaster-related homeowners’ claim. And it would void any investigation extension on those claims outright.
No extensions. No exceptions.
That second piece is the one claims teams will notice. Extended investigation windows are a standard tool when catastrophe volumes spike. Under the FAIR Act, they would vanish for any homeowners’ claim tied to a qualifying disaster.
The bill draws its definition from federal law. A qualifying disaster is any event where the president declares relief under the Stafford Act (42 U.S.C. Ch. 68), or where the governor has requested such a declaration. The bill’s list runs from hurricanes and tornadoes to earthquakes, mudslides, droughts and explosions.
Policyholders filing a disaster claim would also need to give the insurer a designated point of contact - either themselves or someone acting on their behalf.
The bill would take effect 60 days after enactment and apply only to claims filed after that date. It would not reach back to existing claims.
HB 2876 sits in committee. But if it advances, catastrophe adjusters and claims managers would be working under tighter deadlines at the exact moment their caseloads are heaviest.
The provisions described in this article reflect the text of an introduced bill. HB 2876 has not advanced beyond committee referral and is not enacted law.
