#floridalawyer – Page 6 – Miamilawyer1.com

November 21, 2014

Weekly Review for Florida Insurance Law for Friday, November 21, 2014

Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week for the insurance industry, Florida insurance law, Florida insurance claims, and Florida insurance trends. Enjoy!

Switching to a Cheaper Property Insurance Company? Better Think Twice
Over the past few months, many Citizens Property Insurance policy holders received a notification that, unless they opted out within a certain time frame, their property insurance would be automatically transferred out of Citizens and into one of several small start-up insurance companies. These newly formed property insurance carriers have been nick-named “take-out” companies because their sole source of new business is to take over property insurance policies that have been transferred out of Citizens.

This process has created a love/love relationship between Citizens and these new insurance companies as, through the transfer of policies out of Citizens and into these new start-ups, Citizens can further its goal of depopulating its customer base and the new start-ups get “free” customers without having to market for same.

Read more here…

Florida Gov. Scott Facing Rising Seas, Climate Change Politics
When Florida Governor Rick Scott won re-election Nov. 4, he triumphed over both his Democratic challenger and California billionaire Thomas Steyer, who spent $20 million painting him as a climate-change denier.

Scott, a 61-year-old Republican who during the campaign deflected questions about the topic by asserting that he isn’t a scientist, has little time to celebrate.

Read more here…

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Florida Insurance Law!

November 3, 2014

Weekly Review for Florida Insurance Law for Monday, November 3, 2014

Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week for the insurance industry, Florida insurance law, Florida insurance claims, and Florida insurance trends. Enjoy!

Insurance industry may be woefully unprepared for climate change
Ceres, an environmental investor advocacy group, has released the results of a new surveyit has conducted in the insurance industry. According to the survey, the majority of U.S. insurance companies are woefully unprepared to handle the risks associated with climate change. While many insurers have been relatively cavalier with their claims that not enough is being done to mitigate climate change, several companies have done little to prepare themselves for future environmental risks.

According to the survey, only 10% of insurers operating in the U.S. have made public climate change management statements, offering information about what these companies plan to do about the issue. These companies have made little to no effort to showcase the steps they are taking to make use of climate risk management programs or how they are approaching core underwriting and investment issues that could be influenced by a changing climate.

Read more here…

Florida Approves Up to 183K Takeouts from Citizens for 2015
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) has approved the removal of up to 180,040 personal residential policies and 2,527 commercial residential polices from Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

The OIR said these are the first take-outs approved for 2015.

The number approved for takeout is not necessarily the number that will actually be removed from Citizens. In 2014, the total number of policies approved for take-outs was 1,109,644 while the actual number of policies removed from Citizens this year as of September 18, 2014 is 127,550, according to OIR.

By statute, policyholders may choose to remain covered by Citizens during take-out offers; however, they may be at risk of higher assessments if they stay with Citizens.

The approvals for 2015 involve the following nine companies…Read more here.

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Florida Insurance Law!

October 17, 2014

Weekly Review for Florida Insurance Law for Friday, October 17, 2014

Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week for the insurance industry, Florida insurance law, Florida insurance claims, and Florida insurance trends. Enjoy!

Florida Insurance Law: Atlantic Hurricane Season Could Still Surprise
As weather-watchers focus on Typhoon Vongfong in the Pacific and Cyclone Hudhud in the Bay of Bengal, a subtropical depression has formed south of Bermuda late last week, prompting a tropical storm watch there.

With maximum winds of 35 miles (56 kilometers) per hour, the system was 590 miles south of Bermuda, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. A storm gets a name when its winds reach 39 mph.

While one potential system may be enough to give pause, there are clues that larger storm-friendly environmental forces such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation and a Kelvin wave are coming together across the basin, said Dan Kottlowski, a hurricane forecaster at AccuWeather Inc.

“That’s why the season lasts until late November,” Kottlowski said.

Fortunately, the pieces are coming together a month after the Atlantic season’s statistical peak, at a time when the heat is draining out of the tropics. An alignment like this a month ago might have provided fuel for a severe outbreak.

Read more here…

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Florida Insurance Law!

October 6, 2014

Weekly Review for Florida Insurance Law for Monday, October 6, 2014

Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week for the insurance industry, Florida insurance law, Florida insurance claims, and Florida insurance trends. Enjoy!

Florida Insurance Law: Florida’s Citizens Pays Off Bond, Drops Surcharge 2 Years Early
Florida’s state-backed property insurer will stop collecting a one-percent assessment that had been used to retire a bond issued following the 2004-2005 hurricane season.

The Citizens Property Insurance Corp. board of directors decided the insurer will have the necessary funds to retire the bonds as of June 15. The bonds had been scheduled to be paid off in June 2017.

Citizens Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Montero said the decision follows last year’s vote to continue the assessments.

“When we came before the board last year, we recommended continuation of the one percent for another year in anticipation in the future or even elimination of the assessment,” said Montero.

Citizens issued the bonds after the 2004-2005 hurricane season when eight major storms struck the state. Those storms left Citizens with a $1.7 billion shortfall. As a result, in 2007 the insurer levied a 1.4 percent emergency assessment paid for by all the state’s property policyholder.

That funding decision allowed Citizens to start paying down a 10-year post-event bond issuance that had a total price tax of $1.38 billion.

Read more here…

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Florida Insurance Law!

September 26, 2014

Weekly Review for Florida Insurance Law for Friday, September 26, 2014

Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week for the insurance industry, Florida insurance law, Florida insurance claims, and Florida insurance trends. Enjoy!

Miami Hopes Storm Pumps, Seawall Will Protect Against Rising Seas
Climate change is not only already visible in iconic South Beach, but so is climate change adaptation, in the form of new storm water pumps meant to keep rising sea levels from swamping low-lying streets, city officials said Wednesday.

Extreme high tides in the fall and spring push seawater up through aging infrastructure, flooding some Miami Beach streets with more than a foot of water even on sunny days, snarling vehicle and pedestrian traffic. National and regional climate change risk assessments have used the flooding to illustrate the Miami area’s vulnerability to rising sea levels.

Watching a new storm water pump being readied for installation along the city’s bay front, officials said they hoped the project would make Miami Beach, a barrier island with an average elevation of 4.4 feet above sea level, an example of climate change adaptation instead of only risk.

A system of about 60 new pumps across the city will keep streets dry for the next 25 to 30 years, said Mayor Philip Levine. A higher sea wall also is being built to cope with storm surge flooding.

Read more here…

Commercial Rates in Florida’s Citizens Going Up 3.3%
Rates for the almost 100,000 commercial property risks insured by Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corp. will rise an average 3.3 percent next February.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) has approved the increase, which is less that the average 5.2 percent increase requested by Citizens. The decision came after 45-day deliberative process and a public hearing on Aug. 27 in Tallahassee.

Commercial polices are found in both Citizens’ Commercial Lines and Coastal Accounts and represent 99,009 of Citizens’ total 933,807 policies statewide.
OIR previously approved new rates for homeowners accounts, a statewide average rate decrease of 3.7 percent.

Read more here…

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Florida Insurance Law!