News & Resources

News sources are saying that President Obama is “set to sign” the flood insurance bill we discussed in our last post. There were whispers of a veto earlier this year because the White House had some qualms about the bill (see our Jan. 31, 2014, post). A report from the Office of Management and Budget had questioned the fiscal wisdom of rolling back the planned rate increases from the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012. If rates did not increase, the National Flood Insurance Program would continue to operate with a significant deficit, the OMB said.

The U.S. Senate has passed the Menendez-Grimm bill, also known as HR 3370, also known as the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013, also known — informally, at least — as the antidote to Biggert-Waters. After months of wrangling in both the House and the Senate, the bill is finally making its way to the president’s desk, where it may or may not be signed. We have been following the action for the past few months.

We usually talk about consumers’ issues with insurance companies. Flood insurance, homeowner insurance, auto insurance and life insurance — these are topics that focus on Florida residents and their families. In this post, though, we have something for businesses: the fourth-quarter results of Towers Watson’s Commercial Lines Insurance Pricing Survey.

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.

We are continuing our discussion of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in a class action case against one of the manufacturers of Chinese drywall. The court has ordered that the company pay damages to the homeowners who were the named plaintiffs in the class action. The plaintiffs are not from Florida, but the decision clears the way for Florida homeowners to pursue the manufacturer for damages as well.

The Chinese drywall debacle should be well behind us, but homeowners in Florida and a couple of other states are still waiting for their day in court. Their wait should not last much longer, though, now that the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the second manufacturer of the defective drywall cannot remove the litigation to China and must pay damages to a handful of plaintiffs.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 included a provision that has the insurance industry in a kerfuffle. The provision deals with access to the Social Security Death Master File, perhaps the most comprehensive list of deceased Americans available. Life insurance companies in particular use the list to identify insureds and annuitants that have passed away. In fact, thanks in part to Florida’s efforts to hold the companies accountable, a number of life insurance companies have committed to check their lists against the DMF on a more regular basis.

The Social Security Death Master File is in the news again. Florida is an old friend to the DMF, having led the posse of states challenging the use of the file by life insurance companies. As we have discussed before — in our Oct. 12, 2012, post, for example — life insurers had regularly checked the DMF to make sure they were not paying annuities to people who had passed away, but the same insurers had much less frequently checked the list to make sure they were paying life insurance benefits to named beneficiaries in a timely manner. As a result, millions of dollars went undistributed to rightful heirs while the insurance companies collected interest on the unpaid monies.

The House of Representatives is getting closer to acting on legislation addressing the rate hikes imposed by the National Flood Insurance Program. While the companion bill to the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act passed by the Senate has more than 225 co-sponsors, it is looking less and less likely that the House will follow in the Senate’s footsteps. What is not clear at all is what direction the House bill will take and how far it will stray from the Senate’s; House leadership has been mum on the details.