Florida Special Session to Cut Insurance Costs

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Florida House proposes range of special session bills to cut insurance costs

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Jan. 11, 2007 – The Florida House of Representatives unveiled its insurance reforms yesterday. It’s too soon to predict which initiatives will survive, much less find agreement between the House and Senate, but Florida Association of Realtors®’ (FAR) Vice President of Public Policy John Sebree says the House’s proposals go “far beyond where we thought they would go in an effort to cut rates for consumers.”
The proposed reforms will be discussed in a workshop today and considered as six separate bills during the special session of the legislature that begins next week.
According to House leaders, their reform package is “designed to cut homeowners insurance rates by 25 percent, replace Citizens Property Insurance’s Board of Directors and rollback the company’s most recent rate increases, crack down on pup companies and cherry-picking, and ensure that consumers are treated fairly by insurers.”
“Pup companies” are Florida subsidiaries of national property insurance companies such as State Farm Florida and Allstate Floridian. Critics say that the national firms create new Florida-only companies that make overall losses appear worse than they are by comparing hurricane losses only to income derived from state policyholders, ignoring large profits generated derived from property insurance policies in other states.
Highlights of the House reform package:
• Require that existing pup companies increase their investment in Florida by creating a surplus of 133 percent of the minimum required statutory surplus.
• Prohibit the formation of any future pup companies in Florida.
• Require Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation to consider the profitability of national affiliates during the rate review process for current Florida-based subsidiaries.
• Eliminate the practice of “cherry-picking” coverage, affecting insurers that offer other types of insurance policies in Florida, such as auto, and property insurance in other states. If passed, these insurers would have to be “meaningfully engaged in the sales of property insurance in Florida.”
• Require insurers to consider the storm-worthiness of homes, rather than the date of construction, to determine risk.
• Require insurers who purchase low-cost reinsurance through Florida’s CAT Fund to pass 100 percent of that savings onto consumers.
• Repeal the Jan. 1, 2007, Citizens Property Insurance rate filing and refund to property owners any premium already paid.
• Freeze Citizens Property Insurance rates effective on Dec. 13, 2006, for the duration of 2007.
• Require Citizens’ rates to be actuarially adequate, but no longer requires Citizens’ rates to be the highest in the market.
• Eliminate the reinsurance factor used to calculate Citizens’ rates, which should eliminate an estimated 56 percent increase in current rates.
• Allow homeowners to make Citizens policy payments on an installment basis.
• Suspend the provision in law that allows insurance companies to automatically raise rates without review.
• Eliminate regional exemptions to the Uniform Building Code.
• Advocate the creation of a National State Summit on Property Insurance between Florida, other high-risk states, and elected and appointed leaders in the federal government.
• Renew Florida’s commitment to the creation of a National Catastrophe Fund.
• Renew Florida’s commitment to amending the Internal Revenue Service code to allow tax-deferred hurricane reserve accounts.
• Renew Florida’s commitment to amending Internal Revenue Service code to allow hurricane savings accounts.
• Establish Florida’s commitment to amending Internal Revenue Service code to allow a personal income tax deduction for home mitigation.