New York’s Lawsky Sees ‘Obamacare’ as Model for Home Insurance

New York State’s top financial and insurance regulator said the national health care overhaul can serve as a model for simplifying and standardizing homeowners’ insurance.

Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the state’s Department of Financial Services, said in an interview with Bloomberg News that few consumers fully understand all the complexities and details of their homeowners’ insurance coverage.

More standardization among homeowners’ insurance products would make it easier for customers to compare competing carriers, Lawsky said.

“There’s room for greater standardization,” Lawsky told Bloomberg News. “We’re doing it for health insurance and we need to ask, ‘Why not move in the same direction for homeowners’ policies?'” Lawsky said Superstorm Sandy brought to light homeowners’ confusion about what their policies protect and the coverage’s various terms and conditions.

New York’s Department of Financial Services has received some 3,766 consumer complaints regarding Sandy-related personal and business insurance claims through July, according to the department’s “New York State Insurers Disaster Response Report Card.” That translates to roughly 0.93 percent of approximately 404,633 Sandy-related claims that were filed in the state.