About Harborline Mutual

What a mutual is

Harborline is a mutual insurance company. It has no shareholders and is not listed on any exchange. It is owned by its policyholders, who are called members.

When you buy a Harborline policy, you become a member. That gives you three things a customer of a stock insurance company does not have:

A vote. Members elect the board of directors. Each member household gets one vote, however many policies it holds.
A share of the surplus. When claims and costs come in under plan, the money stays in the company or comes back to members as a dividend. It does not leave as profit.
A company that does not have to grow every quarter. We can decline to enter a market, keep a claims office open in a small town, or hold prices steady in a bad year, without explaining it to an investor.

We say this plainly because it is how we are chartered, not because it is a slogan. It does not make us cheaper than everyone else every year. It does mean the people who decide our prices answer to the people who pay them.

Membership and the annual meeting

The members' annual meeting is held in San Diego each May. Every member gets notice of it by mail or email in March, along with the candidates for the board and a ballot. Members can vote by mail, online through their account, or in person. Most vote by mail.

The meeting itself is open to every member. The board reports on the year, the members vote, and anyone can ask a question of the chair or the chief executive. The minutes are mailed to any member who asks for them.

The board of directors

Eleven directors serve staggered three-year terms, so about a third of the board stands for election each year. Ten are independent of the company. The eleventh is the president and chief executive. Most directors are themselves Harborline members, and two seats are held for directors who live in Arizona.

The board is chaired by Judith Castellanos, a retired school principal from Chula Vista and a member since 1979. In May 2026 members elected Ray Fuentes of Yuma, Dr. Helen Sorensen of Pasadena and Thomas Ng of Sacramento. Read about the 2026 annual meeting.

Where the surplus goes

Each year the board first decides how much the company must hold in reserve to pay every claim it could reasonably face, including a very bad wildfire season. Anything above that can be returned to members as a dividend. The board has declared a member dividend in 38 of the last 50 years. In 2026 it returned $16.2 million to auto members. How that decision gets made.

Dividends are never guaranteed, and some years there is none.

Our history

In 1953, insuring a car in San Diego was expensive if you worked on the waterfront or in the aircraft plants, and some companies would not write you at all. Forty-one people, most of them machinists and boat crew, put in twenty dollars each and formed the Harbor Line Mutual Automobile Association to insure one another. The first office was a rented room two blocks from the water, above a ship chandlery.

1953
Forty-one founding members. Auto insurance only, in San Diego County.
1958
The 10,000th policy, and the first full-time claims adjuster.
1962
The first homeowners policy, written for a founding member in National City.
1971
Moves to Shelter Cove Drive on Point Loma and becomes Harborline Mutual Insurance Company.
1979
Enters Arizona with an office in Phoenix, after members who had moved there asked to keep their policies.
1988
Renters insurance.
1996
The claims line is answered around the clock by Harborline's own staff in San Diego and Phoenix.
2003
The largest wildfire season in the company's history: nearly 2,900 claims in San Diego County in three weeks.
2008
Personal umbrella policies.
2014
A claims office in Tucson.
2019
Wildfire mitigation credits for California homes that have been hardened against embers.
2022
Members can report a claim online and follow it as it moves.
2026
317,000 policies in force. A drive-in claims center opens in Ontario, California, and the wildfire credit comes to Arizona.

Leadership

Elena Marchetti

President and Chief Executive Officer

Joined in 1996 as a field adjuster in Escondido and ran claims for nine years before the board named her chief executive in 2019.

Warren Tse

Chief Financial Officer

Responsible for reserves, investments and the dividend recommendation the board votes on each year. At Harborline since 2011.

Adaeze Morrow

Chief Claims Officer

Leads about 420 adjusters, appraisers and claims staff across four offices. Previously ran the catastrophe team through three wildfire seasons.

Glen Hostetler

Chief Underwriting Officer

Sets what we write and how we price it, including the wildfire endorsement and its mitigation credits.

Sofia Arredondo

Senior Vice President, Arizona

Runs the Phoenix and Tucson offices. Grew up in Tucson and started at Harborline answering the claims phone.

Owen Pemberton

Chief Information Officer

Responsible for the systems behind policies, billing and claims, and for keeping members' information secure.

Financial strength

A mutual has no shareholders to raise money from in a hard year, so it has to carry its own cushion. Harborline holds policyholder surplus well above what regulators in California and Arizona require, keeps most of its investments in high-grade bonds, and buys reinsurance so that a single large wildfire or earthquake cannot threaten its ability to pay claims. An independent insurance rating agency rates our financial strength in its excellent range, and has every year since it began rating us.

Our annual statement is filed with the insurance regulators of both states and is available to any member on request.