New Mexico's wildfire insurance moratorium ended in March — one protection survives
New Mexico's wildfire insurance moratorium ended in March — one protection survives
2026-09-15 · New Mexico · Regulation
The insurance protections that Ruidoso-area owners and associations had relied on since June 2024 — postponed cancellations and non-renewals, waived deductibles, grace periods — have been revoked. One requirement survives, and it is the one to put in front of a delinquent owner.1
What was revoked
The Office of Superintendent of Insurance's Docket No. 2024-0051, “IN THE MATTER OF AN EMERGENCY ORDER TO PROTECT ACCESS TO INSURANCE AND THE STABILITY OF INSURANCE MARKETS IN FIRE EMERGENCIES,” produced an Emergency Order and an Amended Emergency Order on June 18, 2024 and a Second Amended Emergency Order on October 1, 2024. The predicate was Executive Order No. 2024-033 for the Salt and South Fork Fires in Lincoln County and the Mescalero Apache Reservation.
A “REVOCATION OF EMERGENCY ORDER, AMENDED EMERGENCY ORDER AND SECOND AMENDED EMERGENCY ORDER,” signed by Superintendent Alice T. Kane, was filed in January 2026. It takes effect “sixty (60) days after the date signed by the Superintendent” — which places the end of the protections at approximately March 31, 2026. The order also provides that “This docket shall be closed upon the effective date.”
The Superintendent's jurisdiction rested on the Insurance Code, “NMSA 1978, Sections 59A-1-1 et seq. and specifically NMSA 1978, Section 59A-2-8(A)(11) and (B) (2021),” with the All Hazard Emergency Management Act as the predicate authority.
The protection that survives
The revocation order does not simply switch everything off. Its ordering paragraphs require insurers to make “reasonable” efforts to inform “policy holders” of the revocation's provisions, to document “their outreach,” and — the operative survival — to “allow a minimum of 12 months for repayment of insurance premiums if needed by the insured.”
What that means at a practical level
An insured who fell behind on premium during the emergency period is entitled to at least twelve months to repay it. For a board there are two uses for that sentence.
The first is for owners. A delinquent owner in the affected area whose unit policy is in arrears has a repayment right the carrier must honour, and most owners do not know it exists.
The second is for the association itself. If the association's own master-policy premium account was deferred during the emergency, the same twelve-month repayment minimum applies when that account is reconciled.
What is gone
The shield. A Lincoln County association's next non-renewal has no emergency order behind it. Postponed cancellations, waived deductibles and suspended late fees all ended with the docket.
That matters more than it would have two years ago, because the underlying market has continued to tighten. New Mexico's Superintendent reported more than 6,200 homeowner policies non-renewed by national insurers in 2025 — the highest figure ever recorded in the state and nearly triple the roughly 2,200 recorded in 2021.
What an emergency order actually buys, when there is one
Boards in fire country should know the shape of this instrument in advance, because it recurs. The standing template is the order OSI issued for the Trout Fire in Grant County on June 17–18, 2025.2 Under it, property insurers had to “provide grace periods for premium payment and claims submission, waive deductibles, postpone cancellations and non-renewals, and suspend late payment fees.”
Three features define the instrument. It is time-limited — ninety days in the Trout Fire order. It is geographically scoped to named counties or fire-affected areas. And, as Docket 2024-0051 demonstrates, it is revoked once the Governor's underlying emergency lapses.
The correct way for a board to treat one is as breathing room in which to place replacement coverage — never as a renewal guarantee. An association that used the 2024 orders as a reason not to shop its master policy has now spent that time and lost the protection.
What to do now, in Lincoln County and anywhere else in fire country
Establish whether the association or any owner carries deferred premium from the emergency period, and put the twelve-month repayment minimum in writing to the carrier. Shop the master policy on the assumption that non-renewal is a live outcome rather than a remote one. And pursue common-element wildfire mitigation, because it is the only variable a board controls that changes how the risk is underwritten.
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