There are times when a review of pending legislation about insurance makes us think of the ’60s cartoon, “Underdog.” Our hero saved people from perilous situations with a cry of, “There’s no need to fear! Underdog is here!” The insurance industry has your back, Florida.
In our last post, we were talking about a couple of bills that Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has been lobbying for at the Florida Legislature. One of the bills originally had a provision regarding assignment of benefits for emergency mitigation. The version approved by the Senate — and scheduled for debate toward the end of April — does not include the language, but it’s worth talking about.
A friend of ours plays a game she calls “Rather.” Players are given two bad choices and must choose one over the other. The choices range from the innocent to the gruesome: Would you rather be the Scarecrow or the Tin Man? Or, a Florida favorite, would you rather be attacked by an alligator or have to relive high school?
The insurance industry group at Accenture PLC released the results of a survey recently that must have made a few agents and brokers shudder. The results, in fact, may explain in part why the industry is so anxious for Congress to pass the National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers Reform Act (see our Feb. 4 post): If they cannot sell across borders, agents and brokers will have a tough time competing with, oh, Amazon and Google.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently released a report that showed that Florida residents are paying the highest property insurance rates in the country. Data showed that the average homeowner was paying approximately $1,933per year in insurance premiums.
Another 45,000 homeowners policies could be leaving Citizens Property Insurance Corp. in March. Florida’s insurer of last resort has been trying to shed policyholders and their risk for the past couple of years, and the Office of Insurance Regulation recently approved another “takeout.” We discussed the overall effort and the company’s goal of moving 400,000 policies to private insurers in our Sept. 27, 2013 post.
Floridians received some bad, but not unexpected, news last week. According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ recent report, the state has the highest homeowners insurance premiums in the country. At $1,933 (in 2011, the most current year available), the average rate here is almost twice the national average.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners released its annual homeowners insurance rate report last week. Floridians will not be surprised to know that our average rate of $1,933 is the highest in the country — almost twice the national average and about four times as much as the lowest ranking state.
Floridians know their way around sinkholes, especially near Tampa Bay. It is likely, then, that the man who bought a house in the area was well-versed in the risks associated with living so close to Sinkhole Alley. He knew enough, at least, to call his insurance company for advice when he noticed cracks in his home’s foundation.
Insurance companies are all about risk. They weigh the odds that a home will be damaged by a flood or a windstorm, and they decide how much taking on that risk will cost. If the cost is too high, the insurer just says no to the applicant, either for the whole policy or just for the riskiest coverage. Think, for example, about the health insurer that denies coverage for a pre-existing condition but agrees to cover everything else. Or the homeowners insurance company that covers fire damage but not flood or windstorm damage.
