As Florida’s insurance industry and lawmakers gear up for the coming legislative session, a trade association for risk managers is asking for more sweeping reform. The Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. wants the federal government to promulgate uniform, national regulations for commercial insurance.
There’s a silly ad on television right now, for a smart phone. The phone is reading messages to Santa (Mrs. Claus writes to stay away from the cookies, for example), ending with a summary of Santa’s schedule. “You have 3.7 billion appointments today,” the electronic voice croons.
Every year, an untold number of Florida’s families wonders what would happen if a big storm rolled in on Christmas Eve and Santa couldn’t make it. Rudolph can only get so far with the shiny nose thing. In hail and sleet and even a major wind storm, Santa could be grounded — or worse, he could be in an accident along the flyway or on the slippery roof of someone’s house.
We are continuing our discussion of a study scheduled to be published in January. The researcher, a law school professor, looked at policies from the top 10 insurance groups in six states. (Florida was not one of them.) What he found was that some of the big insurance companies use policy language that is “systematically less generous” than the language used in the once-standard Insurance Services Office policy.
Most Florida homeowners are probably more familiar than they want to be with shopping for insurance. Indeed, in this state, a homeowner may just be grateful that he has a choice. It’s a safe bet that the choice comes down to price, too — premium and deductible, especially in a tight market, tend to outweigh the fine print of the insurance policy. It’s just the standard stuff you find in homeowner policies, right?
We have been talking about business insurance. The passage of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 changed the landscape for businesses — especially financial services companies — by instituting a de facto incentive for whistleblowers. The heightened risk of an investigation, initiated by an internal complaint or a regulatory inquiry, should prompt business to review their insurance policies. The directors and officers coverage of the old days may not be enough.
We are continuing our discussion of the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on business insurance. The law includes protections and incentives for whistleblowers that may very well result in internal and regulatory investigations. Even if there is no wrongdoing, the costs of these investigations will likely be steep. Companies, then, will want to review their insurance policies, particularly their directors and officers coverage.
In the wake of the financial meltdown, mortgage servicing companies and lenders, banks and brokerage houses, any business that had anything to do with the securitization debacle suddenly became the object of intense regulatory scrutiny. Every investigation poses a risk to the company and its directors and officers. Enron is just one example.
The human cost alone was appalling. Last month, 11 people died and 74 were injured — some horribly so — when a modified World War II plane crashed into the crowd of spectators at the National Championship Air Races. As one witness said, it looked like a war zone.
Miami-Dade County may have its share of windstorms and hurricanes, but sinkholes are extremely rare in this part of Florida. That may be a selling point for one Marion County family looking to relocate after losing their home to two sinkholes. If there is any good news, it could be that this happened before Citizens’ new premiums go into effect — families with sinkhole insurance could be paying hundreds of dollars more in premiums after the first of the year.
