The Insurance Journal published an article last week, Sometimes I Disagree with the Blogs I Love. The article had a lengthy discussion of this blog. I really like how it started:
Property Insurance Coverage Law – Chip Merlin and team do a great job helping me to understand what’s going on in property insurance law around the country. Everyone that writes here is super sharp and helps me to understand the legal changes and challenges around the country.
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Florida legislators have introduced legislation allowing insurance companies to delay, deny, and underpay Floridians’ insurance claims without accountability. National Flood insurance has no such good faith standards nor accountability and the above news story shows how Floridians can be expected to be treated if the Florida legislature passes anti-consumer laws eliminating protections that have been in place since 1982 for people and businesses hurt by insurers that fail to act in good faith.
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California residents were not spared from disaster in 2018. Instead, devastating wildfires continued, which included the biggest and most devastating wildfires to ever ravage California. The continued disasters were more frequent and begun much earlier during California’s prolonged dry period. The number and size of the wildfires along with insurance carriers’ claim handling have brought insurance issues to the legislature and governor’s attention. This has resulted in new laws benefitting policyholders. Some of the important legislation enacted into law in California in 2018 is summarized below.
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Insurance company lawyers and lobbyists are a crafty crew. Kelly Kubiak got word from me after I learned late Tuesday afternoon that Florida legislators needed to hear from her early Wednesday morning regarding a proposed law that would let delaying, denying and wrongful acting insurance companies obtain a “get out of free jail card” so long as a claim was paid 20-60 days after appraisal. Kelly changed her schedule and travelled up to Tallahassee to do work For the PolicyholderTM.
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Merlin Law Group knowledge manager Ruck DeMinico sent me recent North Dakota legislation pertaining to Assignment of Benefit contacts. This topic was also hotly debated two weeks ago at the Windstorm Insurance Conference in Orlando. Insurance restoration contractors, their lobbyists and attorneys are desperately trying to prevent any changes that would make such contracts more difficult to enter into or enforce. The insurance lobbyists and their public relation firms are doing everything they can to show contractors and their lawyers as evil and greedily taking advantage of the public trust.
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One of the strongest tools in an insured’s arsenal is a good public adjuster. If lucky, most insureds will only suffer a property loss once or twice in a lifetime. Not dealing with claims handling on a day to day basis, navigating the claims process can be not only confusing and tedious, but costly as well if the insured does not know when they are being treated unfairly.
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A raíz de la catástrofe causada por los huracanes Irma y María, surgió la necesidad de revisar el proceso de reclamaciones ante las aseguradoras en aras de hacer este uno más eficiente. Es por esto que, el gobierno ha trabajado en métodos que ayudarán a mejorar los procedimientos de manejo de reclamaciones ante las aseguradoras. Siguiendo múltiples modelos de varias jurisdicciones de los Estados Unidos, los asegurados en Puerto Rico ahora tendrán herramientas adicionales de protección y que facilitarán la resolución de sus reclamaciones, tanto de propiedades residenciales como aquellas que sean comerciales. Recientemente, el Gobernador aprobó enmiendas al Código de Seguros de Puerto Rico para su inmediata aplicación. Dichas enmiendas pretenden solucionar el atraso y aclarar las ambigüedades que han afectado el proceso de recuperación y resolución de reclamaciones de forma justa y adecuada para el consumidor. A continuación, un breve resumen de las enmiendas realizadas al Código de Seguros ahora disponibles para el beneficio de los asegurados en Puerto Rico:
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After the catastrophe caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, there was a need for an efficient recovery process. The government has worked on methods to improve the way insurance claims are handled. Following models from multiple jurisdictions in the United States, Puerto Rico will now have available more protections and resolution methods for property and commercial policyholders. Several amendments to the Puerto Rico Insurance Code have been approved and signed for immediate application to help solve the delay and ambiguity that has affected the process of recovery. Below is a brief summary of each amended law now available for the benefit of policyholders in Puerto Rico:
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The National Association of Public Insurance Adjusters held its mid-year meeting last week and the topic of assignment of benefits, commonly referred to as AOB’s, was on the agenda. Lisa Miller, an insurance lobbyist and regulator I have come across for over twenty-five years was the speaker on the topic.
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The Florida Department of Financial Services (DFS) has issued an email authorizing Florida licensed public adjusters to hire anybody to make estimates of damage. This email corrects my latest two blogs which indicated that the OIR wanted to prevent those not licensed from working on insurance claims by determining valuations of loss and estimates of damage.
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