Changes to Tort Act have overturned legal options for insurers to challenge assessments of storm damage costs. State insurance regulators will issue warnings to insurers regarding storm settlements.
The state’s top insurance regulators have warned insurers to “ensure they are following the law” when dealing with claims from last year’s aggressive hurricane season, or face consequences .
The warning will trigger the initial stress test of a new rule regarding disputes between insurers and policyholders. This is the first time that hundreds of thousands of storm damage claims have been filed since Congress passed reforms.
The number of lawsuits filed against insurance companies has dropped dramatically since the change in tort laws that it passed in 2022, but complaints from policyholders regarding the handling of storm claims have been reported as state finance. It’s flooded with complaints from the Department of Services, the Florida Department of Insurance and Regulation said. Also, both chambers of Congress have heard slow processing charges and insufficient settlements are inadequate to repair the wreckage of nature’s wrath.
“A significant number of flood-related complaints.”
“DFS has received considerable flood-related consumer complaints regarding timely claim payments, inaccurate claim payments, and post-underwriting,” said Shiloh Elliott, a spokesman for Florida Insurance Regulations. I’m writing this by email.
Requests to DFS have quantified how many complaints have come, and how many numbers were not returned immediately on Thursday, compared to the aftermath of the previous storm.
Standard homeowner insurance doesn’t cover flooding – unless water intrusion into your home is associated with hurricane winds. However, a significant portion of the storm claim dispute with insurance companies came in as a wind-induced violation (covering standard policies) or whether it was a result of a rainfall rapid (for most homeowners). Not applicable. Policy).
More details: Hurricane Milton is the first test of insurance reforms and is likely to generate recurring debate
Insurance regulators refer to wind and water conflicts
A memo from insurance commissioner Michael Yaworsky claims that a memo requesting more data from insurance companies on Thursday is being adopted to avoid paying policyholders for storm damage. It is particularly mentioned.
“The office recently excludes anti-coupled causal policy language (excluding loss costs that could have occurred during a hurricane, but excludes loss costs that were not directly due to wind) and policyholder coverage. “We learned about the possibilities associated with explicit avoidance of applying,” the insurance regulator says. “Committee Yaworsky hopes that the insurance company has in mind before denying a claim for full loss and ensures that the company is following the law.”
The insurance market wobbles after hurricanes Irma and Ian, and the Republican-controlled Congress passed in 2022 has taken away much of the incentive for lawyers to bring storm damage claim disputes to court. If the policyholder’s claims were found to be greater than those offered by the insurance company, the attorney’s fees are no longer added to the settlement.
The move has pushed forward with the argument that tort reform is key to reinforce the state’s abused insurance market by reducing fraudulent legal claims, but policyholder advocates have said they have been saying. , said policyholders are merciless in assessing insurance companies’ repair costs from the storm.
In addition to recognition, the percentage of claims without paying in the wake of Hurricane Debbie, Helen and Milton in 2024 has grown compared to reported results from Hurricane Ian in 2022 and IRMA in 2017 It seems that it did.
28% of Ian’s claims were closed without payment. And almost 31% of IRMA’s 956,000 claims were closed without payment.
Milton’s results, where 83% of claims have been closed so far, show that 40% of the 264,763 claims in the storm were closed without payment. Among those who were not paid, the cost of losses for 43% was estimated to be less than the deductible in the policy.
In Helen, 53% of the 67,000 storm claims so far have been closed without payment.
In 2023, Hurricane Idria is Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state’s largest insurance company, Citizens Property Insurance Corp., and Category 3 strength, which closed more than half of its claims without payment in 2023, Big Bend. I’ve reached it. The results show that citizens with higher deductions than most insurers, many of the reported damages are floods that are not covered by their policy, and that the insured party has taken over their policies by another company. It was caused by a claim that was mistakenly filed with the citizen because he had no idea.
The state has long wanted to reduce the number of policies with citizens, a state-sponsored nonprofit organization that private insurers write properties policies they don’t want to guarantee.
Insurance companies are closely monitoring how claims will be digested during this latest storm season. This is stated at a request for additional data from the insurance company.
“OIR’s Market Regulation Bureau confirms information from all three storms that landed during the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season and from the accuracy of insurance companies’ claim decisions,” a statement from the insurance regulatory body said. It states.
Last year, the agency attacked Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Co. and fined $1 million for failing to properly process hundreds of claims after Hurricane Ian.
Anne Geggis is the insurance company of Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Florida Network. You can contact her at ageggis@gannett.com. Help us support our journalism. Subscribe today.
