Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale told lawmakers at a joint House and Senate Insurance Committee meeting that it was unfair to attempt to force insurance companies to cover flood damage if homeowners did not have flood insurance and urged them to be realistic in their assessments of how to proceed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Dale cautioned committee members that if they forced carriers to pay for flood damage they could decide to leave Mississippi.
“The industry will pay what they owe,” Dale told the Clarion Ledger. “They will not pay what the policy did not provide because (policyholders) didn’t pay a premium for it.”
Dale also suggested to committee members that Mississippi’s building codes should be beefed up to make buildings more structurally sound in case of future hurricanes.
Ideas from the insurance committee meeting, scheduled weeks before the hurricane hit, could resurface as proposed laws in either a special session this fall or the regular session in January.
House and Senate Insurance chairmen agreed that stronger building codes could be proposed but those would make construction more expensive.
“I don’t want to put lower income homeowners in a bad situation,” said House Insurance Chairman Mark Formby, R-Picayune.
Topics Flood Mississippi
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