Well, if Florida didn’t have enough to boast about, we do now! The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently released a comparison of insurance expenditures by state and by nation. Florida, the fourth most populous state, ranks third in the U.S. for insurance expenditures. We shell out more every year than developing nations do.
Industry numbers are coming in for fourth quarter 2012, and there is not much good news for property/casualty insurance customers. According to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers’ Commercial P/C Market Index, commercial coverage premiums jumped 5 percent on average during the last three months of the year. The Southeast U.S., including Florida, followed the national trend.
It seems that hardly a week goes by without another insurance provider being found guilty of wasteful, fraudulent, and exploitative business practices. With the stakes so high and matters such as a person’s house, car, or health on the line, any malicious or negligent activity on the part of an insurance company has the potential to irreparably damage a person’s life.
Superstorm Sandy missed Florida, but as we have noted in past posts the storm wrought havoc further up the East Coast. As the insurance industry looks back at 2012, it has become clearer that Sandy was a key component of insurance companies’ higher than normal catastrophic losses last year.
In an incident that would be very scary to any homeowner in Miami-Dade County, a woman in another state is lucky to be alive after a boulder rolled downhill and crashed into their home. The boulder crushed the wall and rolled into the couple’s bedroom, badly injuring the woman. Now the woman, her husband and the home’s owner are hoping the homeowners insurance company will help with the repair costs.
Living in Florida has its benefits, sun, warm weather and great beaches, but it also has a major downfall – hurricanes. Last week the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee announced that it is making changes to homeowners insurance in an effort to protect Floridians.
For those of us who have had health insurance for a while, the likelihood of being denied for a claim is pretty high. But what if getting a genetic test could be used against you so that you weren’t able to get insured in the future?
This blog just wrote yesterday about the havoc that Superstorm Sandy has wreaked on the insurance market. People have had to suffer through endless delays in getting the money that they deserve to help them get back on their feet. What many may not think about is the damage the storm had on several businesses, which may have also lost a ton of property.
This blog has already discussed the devastating impact that Superstorm Sandy has had on homeowners along the northern half of the East Coast. Numerous people were literally left out in the cold when their homes were destroyed and insurance companies slow-walked the processing of insurance claims.
One of the problems anyone who has filed a long-term disability insurance claim in Miami has had is proving disability. Oftentimes, insurance companies will try very hard to deny benefits by claiming an applicant is not disabled or by arguing that while the applicant may not be able to perform his or her old job, there are still things that he or she can do. Sometimes, insurance companies may deny someone their insurance claims because the company has said the individual is not permanently disabled. Working with a disability insurance attorney, however, may be one of the best ways to get the disability insurance benefits an applicant deserves.
