Are you able to think about the scene within the Florida legislature the place insurance coverage trade lobbyists have been presenting drafts of recent legal guidelines to Republican lawmakers? It should have gone one thing like this:
‘These legal guidelines will permit us to not pay claims, or if we’ve got to, we can have much more leverage to pay much less as a result of no person will have the ability to afford a lawyer. And, in the event that they do rent a lawyer and sue, it should value them much more, and we’ll make them undergo extra hoops that exist nowhere else within the nation. We are going to take away virtually any probability of unhealthy religion lawsuits so we will deny much more claims. We is not going to have to supply as a lot protection. And one of the best, we’ll get these legal guidelines handed and never promise to decrease any premiums. Certainly, the charges could go up!’
It doesn’t take a monetary genius to determine that taking folks’s cash and by no means paying what’s owed on insurance coverage claims might be very worthwhile. The geniuses who handed these legal guidelines perceive that primary idea a lot that they’re now touting Florida as an ideal place for insurance coverage firms to do enterprise, as famous within the above video and in an article by Lawrence Mower, Amid Florida Insurance coverage Disaster, Traders And a Senator See Alternative:
Lured by the nation’s highest premiums and new legal guidelines making it more durable to sue insurance coverage firms, buyers see a chance in Florida’s beleaguered insurance coverage market. Present and former state officers and different observers mentioned they’re receiving common inquiries from potential buyers seeking to make a revenue.
‘As quickly as we have been executed with the final vote in session, I had a few folks … together with legislators, asking if I wished to spend money on an insurance coverage firm,’ Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, instructed the state’s insurance coverage commissioner final month.
That features state Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, who has pitched fellow lawmakers on investing in a owners insurance coverage firm that initiatives a 165% return on funding over 5 years.
… However Florida-based insurance coverage firms make use of uncommon monetary buildings that may permit executives to extract appreciable income from owners’ premiums.
A visitor weblog, Main Florida Property Insurers Paid Out Extreme Govt Compensation Packages Dividends For Years, written by Kevin Connor for the American Policyholder Affiliation, famous that:
For years, property insurance coverage firms in Florida paid out extreme govt compensation packages and inventory dividends, primarily transferring income into insiders’ pockets as an alternative of making ready for future years of opposed underwriting experiences as most insurers do.
… One of many few remaining experiences accessible on owners insurance coverage firms is concerning the failure of Sunshine State Insurance coverage Firm in 2014. The corporate reported that as a consequence of an ‘accounting error,’ it didn’t have the required reserves and was positioned into receivership. Sunshine State was later discovered to have shifted thousands and thousands of {dollars} in funds to its father or mother firm and subsidiaries, in addition to giant govt bonuses whereas the corporate was on the verge of insolvency. An fascinating part of the required insolvency experiences is that the division is required to do an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation’s oversight of insurance coverage firms which have later failed. Some have speculated that that is the rationale why these experiences look like suppressed.
Little consideration has been paid to this side of Florida’s insurance coverage market: Insurance coverage executives lined their pockets for years as an alternative of working the businesses responsibly and increase enough reserves and are actually pointing the finger at shoppers, legal professionals, and roofers. We’ve seen questionable statistics usually repeated to help this principle, however nobody has produced validation or verification.
Florida has an insurance coverage disaster as a result of Florida’s insurance coverage regulators and most of its Republican lawmakers are in mattress with insurance coverage lobbyists, as famous in How the Historical past of Insurance coverage Repeats Itself and Is Filled with Fashionable Classes Which Have to Be Acted Upon. The Republican legislature, authorities officers, and insurance coverage regulators being in mattress with the insurance coverage foyer is just not a secret. Donald Trump has referred to as them out on this:1
What can we do? Observe former President Trump’s recommendation—clear the swamp. Insurance coverage lobbyists and the insurance coverage trade run Florida’s insurance coverage market. Till we get them out of the regulation and lawmaking enterprise, this can proceed to be a large number.
Thought For The Day
Don’t spend main time on minor issues. In case you discover that you just’re spending an excessive amount of time on the insignificant, you need to clear home.
—Jim Rohn