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

Florida Insurance Law Weekly Updates

Florida Insurance Law Weekly UpdatesHere 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!

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

Florida Insurance Law Updates

Florida Insurance Law UpdatesHere 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!

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