(C) Florida Phoenix This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Estimated insurance losses from Idalia now near $90 million, state says [1] ['Mitch Perry', 'More From Author', '- September'] Date: 2023-09-05 The state has seen nearly $90 million in estimated insurance loss claims from Hurricane Idalia, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR), representing 11,283 claims made so far. Insurance companies were required to begin submitting data to the OIR beginning Friday at noon. The agency notes that these are preliminary data, as they have not yet been audited or independently verified. Meanwhile, initial estimates of how significant Idalia’s damage could prove to Florida’s insurance markets have been readjusted by insurance analysts. USB Bank estimated that insured losses in Florida could be around $9.3 billion, Reuters reported. Verisk, a global data analytics company, now estimates that insurance losses to onshore property for Idalia will range between $2.5 to $4 billion. Last year’s Hurricane Ian in Southwest Florida caused more than $60 billion in insured losses. The effects of the Category 3 Idalia also could have a deleterious effect on reinsurers that could affect the premiums that they charge customers. Annual property insurance premiums have exploded in recent years in Florida. In 2022, the Insurance Information Institute reported that average annual premiums had risen to more than $4,200 — triple the national average. That organization now says the average premium is nearly $6,000. During the past two years, eight small insurers have gone bankrupt in Florida and Farmers Insurance announced in July that it would stop renewing almost a third of the policies it had written in the Sunshine State. The Florida Legislature held two special sessions in 2022 to address the property insurance crisis, but homeowners’ premiums were not reduced in the process. Legislative Republicans have maintained that it will take at least another year before ratepayers see a difference in their bills. New market entries Speaking on Fox News last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis said the reforms passed in those sessions have resulted in more insurance companies writing policies in the Sunshine State. “We now have four new companies that are actually entering into Florida’s property insurance market, which was not happening for so many years. And we’ve got a fifth company on deck,” he said. The OIR last month approved Orion180 Select Insurance Co. and Orion180 Insurance Co. to form as property and casualty insurers in Florida. Earlier in August, the agency approved Mainsail Insurance Co. and in April approved Tailrow Insurance Co. Broward County House Democrat Hillary Cassel remains unimpressed. Speaking in St. Petersburg days before Hurricane Idalia made landfall, she blasted the property insurance proposals passed in 2022. “People need relief. That’s what they’re looking for, not just relief for insurance companies,” she said while speaking in front of about 25 concerned property owners at the Enoch D. Davis Center in South St. Petersburg. “What relief did we actually see? What plan do we have? We have a Legislature that passed every insurance industry wish list reform and also gave them what I call a $2 billion failed bailout,” Cassel said. “We offered insurance companies $2 billion in reinsurance.” Insurance subsidies In a special session held in December 2022, the Florida Legislature passed legislation that extended a $1 billion subsidy to help insurance companies purchase reinsurance, after creating a similar $2 billion reinsurance fund in another special session held six months earlier. While Cassel is a relative newcomer to the Florida House, having been elected in November 2022, she’s steeped in knowledge about property insurance, having worked in the field for 18 years. She began her legal career by representing a variety of insurance companies, starting with international carriers down to Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-run insurer of last resort. About a decade later, she switched to represent homeowners going to legal battle against those same companies. “If you think insurance companies are bullies, you should see them in the courtroom,” she said. “Their motto is ‘delay, deny and defend,’ and that is absolutely how they operate.” In the May 2022 special session, the Legislature passed a suite of measures to address the crisis, including limiting lawsuits against insurance companies, having homeowners take responsibility for more of the costs for roof replacements, and creating the Reinsurance to Assist Policyholders Program (RAP), which provided a $2 billion appropriation to aid insurers over the following two years. Democrats called it a “tax giveaway” for insurers at the time, and Cassel maintains that opinion today. “We gave [$2] billion to the insurance companies, no questions asked. We didn’t ask them to apply. We didn’t ask them to pay for it. We didn’t ask them to invest. We didn’t ask them to lower your premiums. We didn’t asak them to underwrite auto insurance. This was a no-questions-asked gift to the insurance companies,” Cassel said. Cassel spoke in both Tampa and St. Petersburg last week at the request of her Tampa Bay area Democratic House colleague Michele Rayner-Goolsby. Elected commissioner? One of the counter-proposals that Democrats offered in the December 2022 special session was to make the insurance commissioner an elected position — as it was the case until Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment in 1998 that created a new, elected chief financial officer position by combining the offices of the treasurer, insurance commissioner, fire marshal, and comptroller. The Democrats would have created an insurance commissioner office filled by election to a two-year term in 2024 and then put the seat up again in 2026, to align with the election of the governor and other Cabinet-level positions. That bill also would have created the Property Insurance Commission to review the work of the Office of Insurance Regulation. The commission would be a six-person agency with its members chosen by Republican and Democratic legislative leaders. Currently, the insurance commissioner is appointed by the Florida Financial Services Commission, made up of the governor and members of the Cabinet: the attorney general, chief financial officer, and agriculture commissioner. [END] --- [1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/09/05/estimated-insurance-losses-from-idalia-now-near-90-million-state-says/ Published and (C) by Florida Phoenix Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/floridaphoenix/