Fla, Committee to Discuss Revamping Homeowner’s Insurance Market

Florida’s Joint Select Committee on Hurricane Insurance meets in Tallahassee on Friday to discuss ways to revamp the homeowner’s insurance market. At the meeting the legislators will hear from consumer advocates and this month is expected to consider to boost insurance affordability and availability.

The committee will make recommendations to the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee and the House of Representative’s Insurance Committee. Those two groups will further vet the recommendations and consider legislation that comes from the committee’s suggestions, Rep. Leslie Waters, R-St. Petersburg, the co-chairwoman of the Joint Select Committee on Hurricane Insurance told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.

Committee members are walking a “fine line” when it comes to making suggestions, Waters said. She said no one wants their constituents to pay too much for insurance, but they don’t want to scare away companies either.

“The book [of recommendations] that we got [two weeks ago] looked like it had been written by the insurance industry,” Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale Beach said. “We’ve been hearing from 20 different insurance industry lobbyists, each of whom who are telling us that the only thing we can do is raise rates.”

Among the ideas legislators will consider: a checklist so people know in plain English what their insurance policies cover; allowing insurance companies earlier access to the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund to help them pay claims after a storm; and creating savings accounts where people can put away money to help them pay their deductibles.

Achieving a balance can be tough, said state Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, who oversees the insurance industry as part of his job. He said raising rates isn’t the only way to encourage insurers to stay.

Also helpful would be aggressively pursuing fraud cases and stricter building codes, he said.

“Any proposed solution is likely to be complicated. If here was a silver bullet, we’d have shot it,” Gallagher said.

Topics Trends Homeowners Market