Delos Insurance in California: Who It Writes and What the 2026 Expansion Changed

Delos Insurance Solutions is a managing general agent, an MGA, based in San Francisco, and it writes homeowners insurance for California homes with wildfire exposure. It runs its own wildfire model and uses it to accept properties other insurers turn down. Delos is not itself an insurance carrier. The policies it sells are issued by Homesite Insurance Company and Lloyd's of London, and in March 2026 the company announced it had opened eligibility to more than 1 million additional homes in twelve months, which brought its statewide total to roughly 12 million.^[1]

If a wildfire nonrenewal pushed you toward the FAIR Plan, Delos is one of the few names your broker can shop against it. The chain is short: the Delos model scores your specific parcel, the score decides whether you are eligible, Delos underwrites the policy as an MGA, one of its carriers issues it, and that carrier is who pays your claim. Everything worth asking about Delos comes back to one of those links.

Delos Insurance Solutions

A managing general agent that underwrites California homeowners insurance in wildfire-exposed areas using a proprietary wildfire risk model, on behalf of the rated carriers whose paper backs each policy.

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What Is Delos Insurance?

Delos is an MGA, which means it does the underwriting, quoting, and policy service, while a separate carrier holds the risk and pays claims. Its two named capacity providers are Homesite Insurance Company and Lloyd's of London,^[2] and Delos says all of its capacity runs through companies rated A by AM Best or A by Demotech.^[1] The split between agent and carrier is worth a minute of your attention.

Homesite is a licensed, admitted carrier, while Lloyd's writes California home business as a non-admitted carrier placed through the surplus lines market. An admitted policy is backed by the California Insurance Guarantee Association if the carrier fails. A surplus lines policy is not, and it carries surplus lines taxes and fees as separate line items on the quote. Before you bind, ask your broker one question: whose paper is this policy on?

What Does Delos Homeowners Insurance Cover?

Delos writes HO-3 policies for primary, secondary, and seasonal homes, plus a separate vacant home policy, and it distributes through roughly 14,000 California brokers and agents rather than selling direct.^[3] An HO-3 is the standard full homeowners form: it covers the dwelling against all causes of loss except those the policy excludes, covers personal property on a named perils basis, and includes personal liability and additional living expense if a covered loss forces you out.

The point of the product is that scope. A FAIR Plan dwelling policy covers fire, lightning, internal explosion, and smoke, and nothing else without add-ons. Moving to an HO-3 gets back the coverages the FAIR Plan never had.

The vacant home policy fills a real gap too. Most standard forms restrict or suspend key coverages once a home sits empty past a stated period, often 60 days, so owners between tenants, mid-renovation, or settling an estate usually cannot buy a standard HO-3 at all.

How Is the Delos Wildfire Model Different?

Legacy catastrophe models score wildfire risk broadly, often by territory or brush zone, which is why entire ZIP codes get nonrenewed at once. Delos models the individual parcel. The company says its model draws on hundreds of parameters, including NASA earth observation imagery, high-resolution wind data, fire suppression efficacy datasets, and metrics for urban conflagration, the house-to-house spread that drove the Eaton and Palisades losses.^[4] Delos research puts a number on the disagreement: 65% of homes other insurers class as high risk should, by its model, be considered medium to low risk.^[4]

Two more of the company's claims call for care. Delos states its model correctly predicted the major California wildfires of the past six years, and CEO Kevin Stein said in the March 2026 release that Delos took no fire losses from the January 2025 LA fires.^[1] Both are company statements in company press materials.

What Did the March 2026 Expansion Change?

The expansion changed who can get a quote. Over the twelve months ending March 2026, Delos opened eligibility to more than 1 million additional California homes, including about 270,000 in the five counties surrounding the Eaton and Palisades fire footprints, bringing its eligible universe to roughly 12 million homes statewide.^[1] An October 2025 round accounted for 265,000 of those, spread across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties.^[4]

The timing matters because the fires pushed the residual market the other way. FAIR Plan enrollment jumped 43% to 668,609 policies between September 2024 and December 2025, the figure Delos cited in its release, and the plan's own data shows 696,562 policies in force by June 2026, backed by $768 billion of exposure.^[1][5] Against that backdrop Delos makes its sharpest claim: by its analysis, more than half the homes currently on the FAIR Plan are eligible for a single comprehensive Delos policy.^[1] If your address was declined in 2024, that answer may have changed.

Delos or the FAIR Plan: Which Path Fits?

The practical choice is rarely Delos against a standard carrier, because if a standard carrier would take the home you would already be there. The choice is a California FAIR Plan policy wrapped with a difference in conditions policy against a single HO-3 from a program like Delos. Put them side by side:

The two-policy stack works, and hundreds of thousands of households run on it. Its weakness shows at claim time, when a loss touches both policies and mismatched limits, deductibles, or effective dates leave a seam nobody covers. A single HO-3 has no seams. What it has instead is a gate: the model has to accept your parcel, and an acceptance this year is not a promise for next year's renewal.

This guide is for educational purposes and summarizes public company statements and California market data. Your policy's specific terms, conditions, and endorsements control. Talk to a licensed broker about your actual exposures.

The Bottom Line

Delos Insurance Solutions is a wildfire-focused MGA. Its HO-3 and vacant home policies are issued by A rated carriers, and its model accepts many homes the rest of the market declines. The March 2026 expansion made roughly 12 million California homes eligible, including, by the company's count, over half of those on the FAIR Plan. If you are carrying a FAIR Plan and DIC stack, have your broker test your address against it at renewal.