It’s a sad state of affairs, but its the truth .

So what is this year’s scapegoat topic of why insurance companies after no hurricanes in 5 years MUST raise our premiums?  Sinkholes and those pesky public adjusters who, according to the insurance industry are “bleeding” the industry dry. 

Really?

There are less than 1500 active public adjuster licensees in the great state of Florida which has a population of close to 20 million.  The large majority of people don’t even know what a public adjuster is. 

So the argument being put forth until about two weeks ago, was that sinkhole claims were in large part fraudulent and being fueled by public adjusters.  As an aside - a very small number of PA’s actually handle the specialized sinkhole claims.  They are typically very complicated and require a great deal of experience.  Another reason a homeowner would turn to an expert.  The majority of public adjusters have never filed a sinkhole claim.  A survey recently performed by the Florida Association of Public Insurance Adjusters (FAPIA) revealed that only 6% of the respondent public adjusters have ever handled a sinkhole claim.

The insurance industry asked the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) to put out a “data call” sometime in September 2010 to get to the bottom of the alleged problem with sinkholes.  The allegation  made to dozens of media outlets during an editorial board tour by OIR Chairperson, Kevin McCarty was that fraud was rampant and the increase in sinkhole claims could be attributed to the consumer advocates who are licensed by the State to work as public adjusters.  McCarty and others consistently referred to public adjusters as “cost drivers”. 

Well, the study was done on the taxpayers dime.  The result? 

They released their report two weeks ago which found that “From 2006 through 2010, only 203 claims were reported to the Department of Financial Services Division of Insurance Fraud—less than 1% of the total claims reported. The number of alleged fraudulent claims peaked at just over 2% of the total claims reported in 2007. ”

Hey, wait a minute.  What about those evil public adjusters?    Weren’t they responsible for all these allegedly fraudulent sinkhole claims?  Well, apparently not.  Funny how the media didn’t pick up on that fact, though.  Maybe because they put themselves out on a limb repeating the insurance industry mantra “bad public adjusters, bbaaaddddd”.

Is it possible, that insurers will continue to find ways to use public adjusters as scapegoats in Florida’s upcoming legislative session?

The answer, of course, is yes.  Unfortunately, for them, each time they try to smear the honorable profession of public insurance adjusting by spending taxpayer dollars on government funded research and reports - they come up empty.   The same thing happened earlier this year when former representative, Janet Long, commissioned the Office of Public Policy and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) report on public adjusters. 

Why?  Because the problem is not with public adjusters.  If our legislators and law makers would stop listening to the special interests and deal only in the facts - they would realize that there is, indeed, a problem with the insurance industry and also an increase in sinkhole claims.  But the cause is not public adjusters.  The cause, which is very well documented, appears to be related to a number of other issues such as droughts, cold spells, increased building in areas prone to sinkholes and increased water usage and strawberries.  Strawberries?  Yes, but that’s another article.

Floridians live on a bedrock that is supported in large part by the hydrostatic pressure from our underground aquifer.   When that water is drained for use by farmers during cold spells, as it was in January of this year - a large number of sinkholes develop.  Some immediately and some appear more slowly.  You can find this basic information by googling the US Geological Survey and Sinkholes.  It’s scientific fact.

Our lawmakers must look to science, not the insurance lobby, to find an answer to Florida’s  growing sinkhole problem.

Meanwhile, if your home begins to show the signs of sinkhole damage, the insurance lobby would prefer it if you would wait until it is completely swallowed by the earth before making an insurance claim.  And please don’t dispute the insurance company’s decision by hiring a “cost driving” insurance professional to represent you.    According to OPPAGA, if you do, the insurance company will end up paying you over 500% more than what you were originally offered.

But if you don’t call the insurance carrier when the first signs of damage appear, the insurer could potentially accuse you of failure to mitigate damages (a policy exclusion).

It’s the ultimate catch 22 and Floridians are caught in the middle.  Meanwhile, make sure you pay those premiums on time or risk cancellation of the policy you must turn to if the ground beneath your home begins to open up.

That self serving message serves no other purpose than to distract from the real issue. If an insurer is paying on “re-opened” claims, then it stands to reason that those claims were initially underpaid. Unless the insurance industry would have us believe that they are paying for claims that are not owed. We all know that is not the case. On a majority of these cases, underpaid claims are presented by claim professionals, hired by Florida’s insureds. These claim professionals are known as public insurance adjusters, because they work exclusively for the public. They are licensed, bonded and the best public adjusters practice their profession full time and are members of the Florida Association of Public Insurance Adjusters.

Underpaid losses sometimes receive innappropriate attention simply by virtue of the fact that they must be “re-opened”. In an article written by Paige St. John of the Pensacola News-Journal and reprinted in the Insurance Journal on June 5, 2007 the assertion made is that “Citizens seeks to reign in the lawyers and freelance adjusters it alleges are whipping up disputes”. http://www.taskforceoncitizensclaimshandling.org/NewsClip1.htm Whipping up disputes? Insured’s attempting to make repairs sometimes discover that all the losses were not addressed or they were simply underpaid. This is not tantamount to “whipping up disputes”. Insurance claims can be an entirely foreign experience to most people. Most either give up, or get help. The sad truth is that insurance companies are banking on their policyholders either making a mistake or simply giving up. The fact that these so called “re-opened claims” are being paid is evidence that they were originally underpaid.

The safest bet for any home or business owner to make sure that they don’t get underpaid for an insured loss is to hire a qualified and experienced public insurance adjuster. It is difficult for the layman to know how to find a public insurance adjuster. The public adjusting profession is no different than any other profession as to having good, competent and honest members as well as bad, incompetent and dishonest ones. Ask for references and do your research. Make sure that the public adjuster you hire has the experience to handle your claim. The only thing worse than not having access to a public insurance adjuster is having a bad one.

A qualified public insurance adjuster will be be able to provide references. They will review the insurance policy to make sure that all terms and conditions are complied with by the policy holder. The PA should be qualified at writing a complete damage estimate and be able to document the damages with video or photos. The PA will organize all supporting documentation including expert reports (engineers, accountants, electricians, etc.) to make sure that the loss is proven and that an underpaid claim is paid in full. A qualified PA will be able to provide references and will be able to keep the policy holder “in the loop” as to the status of the claim, at all times.

If you have an insurance claim, in Florida, call Florida Adjusting Services Team at 866-931-3278 or email your questions to adjuster@fastclaim.net for an immediate response. Check with the Florida Association of Public Insurance Adjusters for an adjuster near you.

By Eric Gilkey, Managing Editor ClaimsENews - Covering the Business of Loss

Profits are once again on the rise at most property/casualty insurers, but a lack of significant premium growth combined with higher loss expenses has kept growth and income levels somewhat in check.

According to a joint release from the Insurance Services Office (ISO) and the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), P/C insurers’ income after taxes rose from $29.4 billion in the first half of 2006 to $32.6 billion in the first half of 2007 . That’s a growth percentage of more than 10 percent. The report also stated that the net worth of insurers - or surplus - has increased from the record highs attained at the end of 2006, rising from $486 billion to $512.8 billion.

“The increase in surplus going into the hurricane season is certainly welcome news for both insurers and policyholders,” said Genio Staranczak, PCI’s chief economist, in a statement. “Though Hurricane Humberto caused relatively little damage when it surprised everybody and hit Texas , the hurricane season doesn’t end until November 30. We could still get walloped like we did in 2005, and the growth in surplus further assures that insurers will have the resources to provide financial protection to their customers in the event that we do.”

From the claims perspective, ISO and PCI said that written premium growth failed to keep pace with increases in loss and loss adjustment expenses. They reported that o verall net loss and loss adjustment expenses (after reinsurance recoveries) increased $1.5 billion, or 1.1 percent, to $142.9 billion in first-half 2007 from $141.4 billion in first-half 2006. But excluding catastrophe losses, ISO estimates that net loss and loss adjustment expen ses increased $6.6 billion, or five percent, to $139.1 billion in first-half 2007 from $132.5 billion in first-half 2006.

According to ISO’s Property Claims Services (PCS) unit, catastrophes occurring in first-half 2007 caused $3.6 billion in direct insured losses to property (before reinsurance recoveries) - down from the $6.5 billion in direct insured losses to property due to the catastrophes occurring in first-half 2006. Including additional development of losses from the catastrophic hurricanes of 2005, ISO estimates that the net catastrophe losses included in insurers’ financial results fell to $3.8 billion in the first half of 2007 from $8.9 billion in the first half of 2006.

September 3, 2007 By LESLIE EATON and JOSEPH B. TREASTER

NEW ORLEANS - Maxine Cassin, a prominent local poet, thought her homeowners insurance would be more than enough to cover the $100,000 of hurricane damage to her Uptown house here. But two years after Hurricane Katrina hit, Ms. Cassin and her husband, Joseph, are still stranded far from home; their insurer has offered them just $41,000.

Emile J. Labat III, a funeral home owner and real estate investor, thought his $300,000 homeowners policy, along with federal flood insurance, would repay him for repairing his house on Elysian Fields Avenue. But now Mr. Labat feels he was deceived. Many of his losses were not covered, and he was stunned that his deductible worked out to be $16,000.

June Rees, a retired nursing professor, gave up on living in New Orleans and reluctantly moved 75 miles away to avoid skyrocketing insurance costs. The price of her homeowners and flood insurance was going to quadruple, to $8,000 a year, and it still would not have covered wind or hail damage.

I’ve just been ripped out of it,” Ms. Rees said of leaving her home in New Orleans, as if somebody tore me away from everything I’m grounded to.”

Insurance companies may have paid out $11 billion to Louisianians in the two years since Hurricane Katrina, but they have also become a new villain in the tales people tell about the slow recovery here. Every neighborhood is full of horror stories about companies that reneged on their promises, offered only pennies on the dollar in settlements, dribbled out payments, deliberately underestimated the costs of repairs, dropped longtime customers and sharply increased the price of coverage.

And it is not just talk. Though, traditionally, relatively few customers sue their insurance companies, about 6,600 insurance-related lawsuits have landed in Federal District Court here; 3,700 of them are pending. Few have gone to trial. Some homeowners have settled; other cases have been dismissed or sent to state courts, which are also handling thousands of disputes.

Thousands of formal complaints have been filed with the Louisiana Department of Insurance, 4,700 of them in 2006 alone. That is just a tiny fraction of the number of people who feel aggrieved, regulators say: for half a year after the storm, calls to the department reached 20,000 a month.

Louisiana estimates that, on average, homeowners have received $5,700 less than the state believed they should have after the storm, leaving the government’s rebuilding program, the Road Home, responsible for covering an extra $900 million of losses for 160,000 families. And even that program, originally expected to cost about $7.5 billion but now projected to cost several billion more, is not paying enough to make many homeowners whole again.

The usually eye-glazing topic of homeowners insurance is so incendiary now that State Senator Walter J. Boasso, a Republican turned Democratic candidate for governor, has proposed jailing insurance executives found to have acted in bad faith.

Disputing Damage Causes

Insurance companies say the $11 billion they have paid for damage to houses in Louisiana is a record. But they have refused to pay for damage they contend was caused by flooding - which is generally not covered by homeowners insurance - even though many people here believe much of that damage was caused by hurricane wind, which usually is covered.

Several lawsuits here and in Mississippi accuse insurance companies of trying to overstate flood damage so that taxpayers would pick up more of the tab through the federal flood insurance program, which has paid out $13 billion in Louisiana. These contentions have prompted several federal investigations. In other cases, customers are arguing that the companies used deceptive business practices, putting pressure on engineers and insurance adjusters and deliberately underestimating the costs of repairs.

Industry spokesmen say that most homeowners are satisfied and that 99 percent of homeowners’ claims have been settled. Any problems stemmed from the huge size of the disaster, they contend, or from homeowners’ failure to buy adequate insurance or to read their policies carefully. Rising rates, they say, reflect a more realistic sense of the risk homeowners assume by living in dangerous coastal areas.

The insurers did an admirable job under very difficult, unique and extreme circumstances,” said Robert P. Hartwig, the president and chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group in New York. The vast majority of homeowners affected by Katrina are happy and pleased with the settlements they received from their insurers.”

But in New Orleans, many people say that just because they stopped fighting their insurers does not mean they are satisfied.

You’re so worn down by everything you’ve been through that you just don’t have the fight left in you,” said Yolanda Moon, who had expected to receive $39,000 from her insurance policy for wind damage. Instead, she and her husband got $3,000.

Profits and Pain

Byron McDonald admits that by neighborhood standards he may have spent too much money - $350,000 - to build his two-story brick house in the Gentilly neighborhood here, which was finished in 2000. But Mr. McDonald, 61, said he wanted a place he could live in until he died, so he was not worried about the resale value.

The owner of a party supply company, Mr. McDonald bought the maximum flood policy available from the government program, $250,000, and about $200,000 in private homeowners insurance to cover wind damage.

After the house took on five feet of water during Hurricane Katrina, the government flood program paid Mr. McDonald the full amount, plus $67,000 for contents.

Mr. McDonald believed that his private insurer, the Hanover Insurance Group, was supposed to pay for damage above the flood line. Hurricane Katrina’s winds had torn a ventilator off the roof, leaving a big hole for rainwater to pour through, and the water had damaged hardwood floors upstairs and kitchen cabinets. He said he had $200,000 worth of wind damage.

But Hanover’s response was different from the federal flood program’s. The company assessed him a $5,000 deductible and has paid him only $900, he said.

Hanover, he said, did pay him $1,500 for temporary living expenses, but then demanded it back when it decided that his losses had come from flooding. He said he had spent $53,000, mostly to rent places to live in other parts of the state. Dealing with his insurance company, he said, is like talking to a wall.”

Because Mr. McDonald has sued Hanover, Michael F. Buckley, a spokesman for the company, declined to comment on the claim. But he said Hanover had paid more than $500 million for damages from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and was proud of the work we’ve done in response to the storm.”

Other homeowners and insurance adjusters say Mr. McDonald’s situation is part of a regionwide pattern in which insurance companies have tried to reduce the amount they owe policy owners, often by shifting the costs to the taxpayer-supported flood insurance program. One group of former adjusters who contend these practices have occurred filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit, hoping to collect a share of anything the government might recover from insurance companies.

The group’s lawyer, Allan Kanner, said he had gathered evidence that private insurance companies are putting the burden on taxpayers to cover the companies’ own losses at more than 150 homes. Included are four on the eastern edge of New Orleans that he says received about $95,000 apiece, even though their damage had been caused by wind and rain, not flood.

The insurers, including State Farm and Allstate, the two biggest in Louisiana, adamantly deny that they improperly shifted claims to the federal flood program. When the wind blows for a certain number of hours before the levees broke, it’s a difficult call,” said Joseph Annotti, the spokesman for the Property Casualty Insurers of America. But the adjusters made the best call they could.”

A federal investigation into similar accusations in Mississippi is continuing.

The insurance companies have, however, scored a victory in federal court here, where a judge ruled recently that, in effect, anything homeowners collect in federal flood insurance should be deducted from the amount that private insurance companies may owe them, said Gregory P. DiLeo, a lawyer representing policyholders.

Although the judge intended to make sure that owners could not earn a profit from their insurance payouts, Homeowners are saying, “That’s not fair. I paid for two coverages,’ ” Mr. DiLeo said.

The complaints about low payments to hurricane victims come on top of widespread criticism that insurance companies are profiting off their customers’ pain. The critics cite record industry profits of $48 billion in 2005 and $68 billion last year, while policies cover less and cost more.

Insurance companies, which traditionally have made much of their profits by investing premiums until the money was needed to pay claims, are now paying back to policy holders less of the premium money they collect, according to data from the A. M. Best Company, which evaluates insurers.

These trends began well before Hurricane Katrina hit, but the most recent period has been the worst,” said J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America.

Insurers say they began paring back coverage and raising rates on home insurance when costs from big claims began eating into their profits, and as competitors selling only auto insurance began luring away their most lucrative customers.

In 2005, home insurers in Louisiana and in other coastal areas lost billions because of Hurricane Katrina and other storms, said Mr. Hartwig, of the insurance trade group, even as profits went up elsewhere in the country and for other kinds of insurance. Last year, profits went up throughout the industry because no hurricanes made landfall in the United States.

Mr. Hartwig said that insurers were not insensitive or greedy, but that an insurer that is financially weak or insolvent is no use to anybody.”

Premiums Out of Reach

The extensive damage done by the storms of 2005 has sharply raised the cost of homeowners’ insurance in the region, for those who can find a policy at all. Those costs have become a major impediment to recovery.

It makes it very difficult for people, particularly those of marginal means, who want to come back, to rebuild,” said Lawrence Ponoroff, the dean of the Tulane University School of Law here. It is very tough on institutions and on attracting new business to the area.”

The higher premiums have made buying a house - or selling one - here more difficult, said Lynda Nugent Smith, who has been selling real estate here for 34 years. All of a sudden your insurance goes from $2,000 a year to $6,000 a year,” Ms. Smith said. It’s just that cherry on top that makes the whole pile of ice cream and whipped cream fall over.”

Spiking insurance prices have also discouraged builders from putting up much-needed rental housing here and are causing big problems for nonprofit groups trying to develop housing for the poor and the elderly.

One such group, Enterprise Community Partners, has 11 projects on the drawing board, but only one deal has closed. And the insurance on the project is about $2,100 a year per unit, almost seven times more than it would have been before the storm, said Michelle K. Whetten, Gulf Coast director for Enterprise. Another issue,” she added, is getting a policy at all.”

James J. Donelon, the state insurance commissioner, said that some companies were no longer writing new policies in Louisiana and that many were raising prices, increasing deductibles, and cutting coverage for wind and hail. (The state is so worried that insurers will stop doing business there that it has agreed to spend $100 million in incentives to lure companies.)

Mr. Annotti, the insurance industry spokesman, said the billions of dollars paid out for the unexpected surge of hurricanes in recent years has pushed insurers for the first time to focus on how crowded the coastlines have become with expensive homes and businesses.

From a business perspective,” he said, you look at the coastal markets and the catastrophic exposure and you say, “That’s a dangerous place to write policies. I need to charge more or limit what I’m writing.”

State laws are supposed to protect long-time customers from losing their insurance; even so, many people in Louisiana report that their insurance policies have been canceled.

Take Terral E. Miller, a sales executive who bought his first and only house in the Lakeview neighborhood in 1981. We were very happy there, we enjoyed it very much, and it was almost paid for,” he said of the two-story tan-brick house that backed up to the 17th Street Canal, which breached after the storm.

Shortly after the storm, Mr. Miller, 50, was found to have colon cancer, which has since spread to his lungs and forced him to retire. He lives in an apartment in a different neighborhood. Earlier this year, he said, his insurer canceled the policy on the shell of the Lakeview house, on the ground that the house was unoccupied, leaving him without any liability coverage.

With everything else he was going through, that was the last straw, Mr. Miller said. In April, he had the house bulldozed.

By JANE MUSGRAVE

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 24, 2007

WEST PALM BEACH - A Jupiter man who helped QBE Insurance determine that a Boca Raton condominium deserved nothing for the millions in damage residents claim it sustained in Hurricane Wilma admitted in federal court Thursday that he had been charged with insurance fraud and lied to state regulators about it.John Wareham, who was hired to inspect the damage at Chalfonte Condominiums in the wake of the October 2005 storm, said he didn’t intentionally lie on his state application to become an insurance adjuster.

“It was 20 years ago,” the 47-year-old said of his 1987 plea of no contest to a charge of insurance fraud. “I was a child back then.”

At age 27, he said, he simply did what his lawyer told him to do. His lawyer said he should take a plea on a charge that he lied to Allstate Insurance about the value of a Mercedes-Benz that had been stolen. So, Wareham testified, he did.

“I honestly didn’t know what the plea was,” he said.

Wareham’s surprise testimony came on the third day of a trial in which residents of the oceanfront condominium are trying to persuade an eight-person jury that insurance giant QBE should pay them roughly $13 million for the repairs they made after Wilma’s 100 mph-plus winds blew out windows and sliding glass doors at the twin 21-story towers.

QBE claims the condominium sustained about $400,000 in losses - far less than its $1.3 million deductible.

Under questioning from condominium attorney Daniel Rosenbaum, Wareham reluctantly admitted that he erred when he last year told insurance regulators that he had never pleaded guilty or no contest to a felony.

“I guess there was an error on my part,” he said. The answer on the application “should have been yes instead of no. But we’re all humans. We all make mistakes.”

QBE attorneys sought to prevent Rosenbaum from questioning Wareham about his criminal past. Such testimony could prejudice the jury and cause a mistrial, they told U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks.

However, once on the stand, Wareham volunteered information about his arrest.

Looking at charging documents filed in 1987 by Broward County State Attorney Michael Satz, Wareham said there is no way he paid $7,400 for a Mercedes-Benz and then tried to get Allstate to pay him $21,000 for it after it was stolen, as prosecutors claimed.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said of the car he had shipped from Germany. “Where are you buying a Mercedes-Benz for $7,400?”

While prosecutors said he inflated the car’s value by claiming the 1973 model was manufactured in 1978, Wareham said he registered the car according to the paperwork he received when he picked it up at the port in Jacksonville. He was placed on 18 months probation.

Reached later, officials at the Florida Department of Financial Services, which licenses insurance adjusters, said they don’t understand why they didn’t discover Wareham’s Broward County arrest as part of a criminal background check they did when he applied for a license last year. Officials did discover he had been arrested on a weapons possession charge in Yonkers, N.Y. in 1980.

Because the arrest was so long ago and he completed five years of probation, they approved his application.

Rosenbaum said they may have missed the Broward arrest because a few numbers in Wareham’s social security number were transposed.

State officials also wondered why Wareham was working as an adjuster in 2005 when he didn’t get his license until May 2006.

Wareham is an independent adjuster who was working for Interloss, which was hired to adjust claims for QBE.

The trial, one of nearly two dozen in South Florida facing the biggest insurer of condominiums in the state, is expected to wrap up after Labor Day.

The insurance industry, which claims to cover “more property, more lives, more liability-related risks than any time at history,” is busy fighting allegations that customers are receiving smaller payouts than what they were promised. This week, nOW collaborates with Bloomberg Markets magazine to investigate tactics some insurance companies may be using to reduce, avoid, or stall homeowners’ claims in an effort to boost their own earnings.

“The insurance industry…is purposely misleading customers,” California Lieutenant Governor and former Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi tells nOW. “The first commandment of the insurance industry is, ‘Thou shalt pay as little, as late, as possible.’…You go to financial heaven if you can carry out that commandment.”

The insurance industry is enjoying record-breaking profits, but who’s paying the price? Follow this link to watch this facsinating PBS video investigation on insurance industry tactics. It’s a real eye opener.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/333/index.html

Sink says in a letter to Governor Charlie Crist, “Over the last few weeks, my staff and I have taken a comprehensive, objective look at what might happen when No-Fault sunsets. We have met with stakeholders representing all facets of the issue, including auto insurers, health insurers, medical providers, lawyers, my own Division of Insurance Fraud investigators and heard from citizens from all over Florida. Our work led us to create a hypothetical scenario of a post-No-Fault auto accident involving two cars and two drivers. This scenario, which you will find attached, highlights significant policy issues that I believe we must consider as October 1 approaches.”

To read the rest of this letter to the Governor, visit http://www.fldfs.com/PressOffice/Newsletter/2007/072007/PIPLetter.pdf

We encourage you to write to your elected officials and ask them to reconsider allowing Florida’s Mandatory PIP law to lapse or “sunset”. To find your legislative representatives, visit: http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/sections/Representatives/myrepresentative.aspx

http://quote.bloomberg.com/news/marketsmag/mm_0907_story1.html

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation announced it has denied the rate requests of three home insurers, saying they had not substantially lowered rates as required by the state’s recently revised insurance law. Under the changes enacted in January, primary insurers are able to secure reinsurance at discount rates from the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and the savings are to be passed on to policyholders. The insurers involved are: - First Floridian Auto and Home, which offered an 8.3 percent cut for its 91,295 customers. The company recently changed its name to Travelers of Florida. - Cyprus Property and Casualty, which proposed a 5.4 percent rate cut for its 63,129 policyholders. - Travelers Indemnity Company of America, calling for an 8.3 percent rate reduction for 4,596 insureds. Reacting to the state’s action, Nancy Baily, president and chief executive officer of Travelers of Florida, said, “We believe that our rate filing was consistent with Florida law. We look forward to working with the Office of Insurance Regulation to address all of their concerns regarding this matter.” Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said that Governor Charlie Crist and the Legislature by enacting the legal changes during the special session in January had made “some courageous decisions,” and “we will not allow companies to file incomplete or inadequate rate reductions affecting the policyholders of this state.” The office said it has sent notices of intent to deny the rate filings because the reduced rates filed did not adequately reflect all of the savings realized when the state offered less expensive reinsurance to companies last spring. “House Bill 1A made $12 billion of less expensive reinsurance available from the state, and the law requires the insurance companies to pass along that savings to their policyholders in the form of lower rates,” said Mr. McCarty. It is “not to be invested in extra, duplicative reinsurance contracts or profit margins.” Companies have until Sept. 30 to submit their final reduced rate filings mandated by the law, and the office will continue to review each one to ensure they are complete and reflect the policyholder savings ordered by the Legislature, Mr. McCarty promised. His action is the latest in a series of rejections of Florida insurers’ rate filings, some of which are under appeal. Companies have said they made purchases of reinsurance before the legislation went through and were locked into contracts with private reinsurers. Mr. McCarty’s office has also issued subpoenas for State Farm Florida Insurance Company, State Farm Florida Fire and Casualty Insurance Company, and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company to appear and answer questions about their business practices. The hearings slated to take place at the state capitol in Tallahassee were postponed last week after the office said the companies had failed to provide all of the information requested in the subpoenas they were issued. Hearings were postponed, the commissioner said, until the requested information is provided in its entirety. Mr. McCarty’s office noted that he has the authority to hold a public hearing to question a company about their filing pursuant to Florida law. The schedule of upcoming public rate hearings and the television schedule to see them are located on the office’s Web site at http://www.floir.com/pcfr/RateHearings.htm.

• Can you imagine if you weren’t allowed to ask a professional for advice on an important insurance claim, if you needed it?
• What if the law were such that those professionals could no longer make a living helping the general public because lawmakers and the insurance lobby make it so that it was not cost effective for anyone to handle daily claims?
• Imagine yourself up against an insurance company without anywhere to turn for advice except the insurance company’s own adjuster.

If the insuring public does not stand up and let their lawmakers know that this is not acceptable, that’s exactly what is going to happen in Florida.

It seems that lawmakers have gone from one extreme to the other. After August of 2004, when hurricane Charley hit the shores of Punta Gorda, Florida and caused over 50 billion in damages, the Department of Financial Services (DFS) relaxed the requirements for persons to become licensed public insurance adjusters, in Florida. This was a terrible mistake, because people who had absolutely no experience decided that this was a quick and easy way to make money. Many of those people did not have the public interest in mind. As a result the industry’s reputation took a tremendous downfall as consumers began to complain about unscrupulous activity.

This is the perfect example of why it is so important for consumers to do some research when hiring a professional to help. When you need a financial advisor, you don’t choose a person who got their license online and never received any formal training or education. Not taking the time to choose a qualified public insurance adjuster for your residential or commercial claim is tantamount to flipping a coin to decide who will perform complicated surgery on you. It’s just not done that way. Adjusters who are members of the Florida Association of Public Insurance Adjusters subscribe to a stringent code of ethics and are required to take continuing education courses specifically designed to train them to be professionals. FAPIA is also in the process of designing public adjusting certification testing for it’s members that will set all those who pass it apart from the herd of inexperienced individuals out there who are currently calling themselves adjusters.

Make sure when you need the help and advice of a qualified public insurance adjuster in the state of Florida, you choose a FAPIA member first.