Florida homeowners have fewer options for property insurance. Just two weeks into hurricane season, The Farmers Group and AIG say they’re scaling back policy coverage.
Both companies point to their vulnerability to natural disasters like hurricanes and flood.
Over the past 18 months in Florida, 16 property insurance companies have decided to stop writing new business to new homeowners in one form or the other.
WOKV Consumer Warrior Clark Howard says insurers are pulling out of Florida and California because the risks have become incalculable.
“Florida and California will need to offer state-backed reinsurance so that insurers can issue actuarially sound policies.”, Clark said.
Clark suggests shopping for insurance through an independent agent and then get quotes for a high deductible, the highest your mortgage company will allow you take.
“You’re eliminating for the insurer what they refer to as nuisance claims. So you become a less risky, less costly person for them to insure.”, Clark said.
Clark says the Florida Legislature is going to need to step in and address Citizens Insurance, the insurer of last resort. He says the state will have to take over the role of reinsurance, eliminate Citizens, which could allow regular insurers to come back.
“That insurers would be liable for losses up to a ceiling, whatever that is. And then after that the Florida reinsurance would cover it.”, said Clark.
This was posted by my daughter…………………………..Please know, I don’t wish ill on anyone. However, for training purposes, I do hope that those who work directly for my homeowner’s insurance company one day face a catastrophic hurricane so that they are forced to learn the limitations during a true state of emergency. I don’t agree with the price increases but I do understand them. What I don’t understand is all the legal jargon that they have added since Hurricane Ian to essentially get out of coverage and have the homeowner responsible for the damages.
New rules – if the “pad” is destroyed, it’s not covered under the “foundation” section of your coverage. Are you kidding me? The house pad (which is a large mound of dirt that is built up to put the foundation on), has to pass compression tests and a series of protective measures before the concrete can actually be poured… before the house can even be built. Now they are saying it’s just dirt, so if there is a catastrophic flood and the water softens the mound (which this truly takes an act of God to make happen) that your entire foundation is not covered. However, if you don’t get the pad and build the house up, you are in a flood zone and shocker – you are then not covered and/or they charge an extra $5,000 per year to be in a flood zone. And per code, it has to be built-up so really – it’s a part of the foundation!
They also changed the reporting time. You have 72 hours to report catastrophic damages. Let’s see, how many days did we not have power after Ian? At our house, it was a solid week. And how many cell towers were down? It took me over 100 attempts to get a call to go out and that was after I drove 20 miles searching for service! Don’t forget, all the gas stations couldn’t pump gas as it was a hazardous situation until reviewed for proper power, etc. So you want me to run out of gas, looking for cell service that the whole state is affected from, or I’m not covered?
You also now have to prove that you tried to limit further damage after a catastrophic event. Let’s see how to do that… the stores were cleared out of food, there were no tarps, flashlights, batteries, generators or anything to buy… I literally left work the minute the hurricane was announced (almost 6 days in advance) and bought all the supplies I could get. However, that selection was limited. Not everyone could leave their job to do this, and the state doesn’t have enough emergency supplies to cover all of us. You think the stores watch the news and are like “Hey, we should see if we can’t overnight a quick order for large quantities of emergency supplies?” No, it’s can’t be done in the amount of time we have before we actually have to hunker down. Plus that, when it’s a catastrophic storm the stores don’t want to be housing large quantities of expensive supplies (as it is then their loss if the property is damaged during the storm).
I just feel like if they experienced a true catastrophic event, they may feel differently about the limitations they are setting to get out of coverage. It’s not just my policy as I have looked into some other policies and they are the same. If I didn’t have the mortgage, I honestly would not get insurance. When the hurricane hit, we couldn’t get the insurance company to talk to us, other than confirmation a claim had been filed. Then, they sent a joke of a check for $1900 claiming that should fix the roof, replace the fence and pool cage screen. I left 15 messages, sent over 20 emails and had no response. I had estimates that far exceeded that amount. We ended up doing the work ourselves