Throughout my career, I have always been amazed about the fact that financial institutions like mortgage companies, banks and credit unions, all who have a stakeholder’s interest in a property, (either through a mortgage or some type of financial interest or obligation) never seem to question a claim payment made by an insurance company following…
It’s been an eventful year for public adjusters and the insurance claims industry. So I want to share my 2014 News Year’s Wish List for the property insurance industry. I wish Congress would fix the Biggert-Waters 2012 National Flood Insurance Reform Act. This extremely ill-conceived act of Congress is causing great harm to homeowners all…
Last evening we attended the annual neighborhood holiday party which normally is a time of good cheer and an opportunity to visit with our neighbors to catch-up on their families and community news. This year was a little different. The one conversation everyone was having was the unconceivable flood premiums hitting folk’s mailboxes as a…
Citizens floats a sinkhole fix was the headline in the Tampa Bay Times article that ran in the paper on 12/11/2013. The article says letters will go out to “current and potentially future litigants this week that offered to pay for repairs.” This program, which we reported on in one of our previous blogs, has been in…
While the national press is full of politicians pontificating about what Congress has done (as in “done in”) to tens-of-thousands of property owners in the very ill advised legislation called Biggert-Waters Flood Reform Act (B.W.-12) known as the National Flood Insurance Program Reform Act, not to be outdone, the regulators and political types in Tallahassee…
If you have been following the news media lately, particularly the print media then no doubt you have read a number of stories about sinkholes and the remediation method that homeowners are fighting with their insurance companies about. The Dunedin story has fanned the flames of this issue big time and laser focused some interesting…
A policyholder in South Carolina recently wrote us about a fire claim turned nightmare. When notified of a claim, insurance companies will sometimes send out their preferred vendor as a way to provide fast service but also to control costs and prevent the policyholder from hiring their own vendor, since they have contracted reduced rates…
A recent media article following the new catastrophic sinkhole loss in Dunedin, Florida caught my attention the other day as it looks like we have two forces on a collision path. And wouldn’t you know that the poor insured policyholder is caught in the middle. The media recently reported that a Citizens Insurance claim committee will vote…
Public adjuster Keith Grams of Tutwiler & Associates was recently interviewed by WFLA and NBC News about sinkhole insurance repair issues. He offers further comments regarding concerns about the direction the insurance companies and legislature are taking. For many years the Florida legislature and the insurance industry have systematically weakened coverage for sinkholes. Last week’s massive sinkhole…
The catastrophic sinkhole that opened up in Dunedin, Florida has brought attention to limits of the new law that was passed in 2011 by the Florida Legislature. This law made it extremely difficult for homeowners to get proper coverage or alternatively pay a hefty price for a very limited sinkhole policy. Many of the changes are not good…