With the advance of technology and a little advance notice, you can watch your Florida Legislature at work, commercial free via live streaming on your computer or mobile device. Folks, unless you want to testify at a committee meeting you can forget the long drive or airplane flight to Florida’s hither land aka Tallahassee, Florida. All you need is the committee meeting schedule and click the link to watch your favored or disfavored proposed legislation being debated or voted on. Of course this also comes with the ability to hear your elected officials ask questions and comment on the topic being addressed. Believe me, this is at times interesting stuff.

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As the old saying goes, when the Florida legislature is in session, no one is safe.  Even with a decade of no major storms or Cat losses, a lot of things are going on in Tallahassee involving property insurance. Because of their potential impact, I am going to dedicate a few blogs on some of these issues as I think the outcome may in some cases negatively impact Floridians and in others bring about needed change and reform. 
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I received notice that Citizens, the State run insurance company has proposed some changes to their property policy as it relates to the resolution dispute forum called appraisal. The appraisal process has for years been offered universally by most insurance companies as a cost effective way to resolve disputes with policyholders involving damages to their property from a covered loss.
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When involved with complex insurance claims (believe me, nowadays with all these new forms and restrictions, they are all complex and controversial), the policy language and the facts of the loss all must be taken into account to apply them to the coverage in order to get the correct payment to the policyholder.  But this may only be the beginning of what you need to know. Other issues face the adjuster which may be outside of your typical daily sphere of experience and knowledge.
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I read with a great deal of interest comments that were made by the big chiefs at a hearing held by the Office of Insurance Regulation in Tallahassee concerning the rate request Citizens Insurance Company was asking for in the South Florida market. In my view the back-and-forth discussion that took place on August 25 is newsworthy as are some of the back-story items not covered or published. Here is a link from the Insurance Journal that reported on the August 25^th hearing. 

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A few years ago I was invited to speak at a conference of insurance professionals in Rhode Island.  My topic was surplus lines insurance which at that time was a very hot topic, at least in Florida as there was a pending Florida Supreme Court case that had it turned out different, could have changed the surplus market insurance scheme in a big way.  As it turned out due to the Court’s ruling, the surplus lines carriers preserved their unique market position and the world in this insurance community did not stop or even wobble. Having been retained recently on a couple of large commercial fire losses and getting reacquainted with some of the nuances of surplus lines, I thought now would be a good time to revisit this unique line of coverage with a couple of case studies that hopefully will shed light on some of the practical problems for policyholders if they happen to be insured by a surplus lines carrier.

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It may be no surprise that not a lot of bills were filed in this year’s legislative session to correct any real or imagined property insurance crises and those that were, died in various committees.   After all, we are fast approaching a decade of no major hurricane strikes that some are saying is a record going back over hundred years! The sitting duck we were supposed to be is looking more like a stuffed bird hung on the wall. Yes, I know it only takes one, but let’s hope the good times continue to roll. There is too much at stake to see Florida or any of our coastal neighbors hit with the big one in this year’s 2015 Atlantic hurricane season just as we are in full recovery mode from the great recession.

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For those of us who are insiders in the Florida claim adjusting business, the AOB issue has been the hot topic with a whole host of folks calling for its demise. I had previously written about this insurance claim scheme and the response to my blog was amazing. Seems no one likes the assignment of benefit except for some of the folks in the restoration business and of course a hand full of lawyers who have discovered a new opportunity to collect attorney fees. 

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After a scathing report about engineering fraud on 60 Minutes, it looks like FEMA is going to allow policyholders the ability to reopen all Superstorm Sandy insurance claims per a NPR report. As a licensed public insurance adjuster who represents policyholders and handled Sandy flood claims, it would be helpful to understood that the NFIP (National Flood Insurance Program) sets their own very rigorous and draconian adjusting practice that have lead to the situation we have here. As an example, NFIP will not allow for any discussion on the scope of the loss other than what their adjusters says was flood damaged. If there is a disagreement, then the dispute resolution process in the flood policy called appraisal cannot be used to determine scope issues, only price.

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