There are multiple problems. The biggest is that corrections only kick in only after a failure.
Suppose a oil tank farm is incorrectly built, a tank breaks, and the oil gets into the nearby river, killing fish and preventing it from being used as drinking waster for 100 miles downstream for the next week.
Who gets to sue if the insurance company decides to not pay? How much does each lawsuit cost just in lawyer time? How long does it take to get through the legal system?
If the insurance company doesn't have the funds, what happens? This can easily happen because the company has every incentive to find the least expensive insurance company, or the company might be overstretched, like Lloyd's in the 1980s and 1990s with the asbestos, pollution and health hazard suits.
Or it can be more perverse, like an insurance company set up as a front, working with unsafe companies, and where a significant problem or payout simply triggers bankruptcy, and no remuneration.
If different companies have different rules, how easy will it be to switch insurance companies? Because that sounds like a great way to get lock-in. Can I bring my own building inspector in or do I need to depend on the insurance company inspector? Will the codes be public information?
The insurance companies themselves would have to be regulated. This moves regulation up one meta level, and makes it a simple matter of verifying they have the assets necessary to pay out. As opposed to having the regulators figure out what building materials are good, and every other detail about the construction industry.
Insurance companies are usually themselves insured. If they go bankrupt, e.g. a natural disaster or something unexpected happens, another insurance company has to cover it. This is possible because they insure multiple industries and geographic regions, so can take a few hits.
The details will need to be worked out, but I don't see why it would be anywhere near as complicated as working out the details of building codes. Regulations are complicated, we already accept that. This is just a way to significantly simplify it.
Figuring out whether the insurance companies have the assets necessary to pay out is never a simple matter. They don't have the assets to pay out if every policy is fully claimed at once, almost by definition, which means that it's a complicated matter of assessing how many policies are likely to be claimed at once, which requires figuring out details like whether the construction industry is making widespread use of a potentially dangerous material. Insuring the insurers can only help so much; Lloyd's was the insurers' insurer of last resort, and as
dalke points out asbestos claims wreaked havoc on them.
Or when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in '92. 11 insurance companies went bankrupt after 600,000 insurance claims were filed. Almost 1 million people lost insurance coverage.
One of the results was a stricter and statewide building code instead of piecemeal codes. Successive hurricanes helped give evidence for the usefulness of the new code.
Another was state trust fund to ensure sufficient insurance capacity.
Suppose a oil tank farm is incorrectly built, a tank breaks, and the oil gets into the nearby river, killing fish and preventing it from being used as drinking waster for 100 miles downstream for the next week.
Who gets to sue if the insurance company decides to not pay? How much does each lawsuit cost just in lawyer time? How long does it take to get through the legal system?
If the insurance company doesn't have the funds, what happens? This can easily happen because the company has every incentive to find the least expensive insurance company, or the company might be overstretched, like Lloyd's in the 1980s and 1990s with the asbestos, pollution and health hazard suits.
Or it can be more perverse, like an insurance company set up as a front, working with unsafe companies, and where a significant problem or payout simply triggers bankruptcy, and no remuneration.
If different companies have different rules, how easy will it be to switch insurance companies? Because that sounds like a great way to get lock-in. Can I bring my own building inspector in or do I need to depend on the insurance company inspector? Will the codes be public information?