Speaking to the insurance industry is useless, and falls on deaf ears. They base their rates on risk management determined by  actuarial reports and perceived profit. Like most other areas of insurance the industry is out of control. The state insurance regulators have failed. The only thing to which the insurance industry will react is decreased profit. Unfortunately it may take the demise of many good abstractors to accomplish that. When no one can get a reliable title search performed, and title insurance declines because of it...we may see some rationality return.

Interestingly our firm received a decrease in premium this year. As a law firm we insure for malpractice including but not limited to abstracting rather than e& o policy for abstracting only. Several years ago we reduced the amount of abstracting we perform to only those matters that include both the a search order and  the closing for which it is performed. Works well for us.