Figures

$5.3 million

The amount in refunds that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation has ordered Universal Underwriters Insurance Co. to return to 526 commercial policyholders. According to Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty, the premiums charged on hundreds of commercial policies issued by Universal Underwriters between Jan. 1, 2002, and Sept. 30, 2005, were excessive and above what had been approved as unacceptable.

$240,000

The budget that the Mississippi Supreme Court says it needs to hire special judges to preside over Hurricane Katrina-related insurance lawsuits. Chief Justice Jim Smith said most of the cases will come up for trial in 2007. He is asking for a total of $240,000 in the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2007. That is a $168,494 increase over this year’s allocation. About 275 civil lawsuits relating to Katrina damage have been filed in Harrison County, according to the circuit clerk’s office.

3 feet

The safety distance that Florida motorists must give bicyclers they pass on roads under a new law. Motorists who get too close could be charged with a moving violation subject to a fine and points assessed against their
driver’s license.

2,500 feet

The key distance State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. is using as it cuts back on writing in Mississippi’s three southern most counties. The company has decided new property insurance policies will no longer be offered on Biloxi’s peninsula, within 2,500 feet of Back Bay or the Bay of St. Louis, or within one mile of the Gulf or Mississippi Sound in the three coastal counties of Jackson, Harrison and Hancock, said Deputy Insurance Commissioner Lee Harrell. State Farm has a 30.7 percent share of the Mississippi homeowner insurance market.

$649,363

The total that Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty has ordered five workers’ compensation insurance carriers to return out of what his department has determined are excessive profits. Workers’ compensation insurers are required to return profits in excess of 5 percent under state law. The five companies that have been ordered to return premiums to policyholders are ACIG Insurance Co. ($45,100), Alaska National Insurance Co. ($329,577), Fairmont Specialty Insurance Co. ($127,581), Harco National Insurance Co. ($242), and Pennsylvania National Mutual Casualty Insurance Co. ($146,863).

417-0

The vote in the House of Representatives passing H.R. 5637, The Non-Admitted and Reinsurance Reform Act of 2006. The legislation would apply single-state regulation and uniform standards to the non-admitted insurance and reinsurance marketplace The Senate has yet to act on surplus lines regulation.

25

The number of states reporting an outbreak of E.coli linked to spinach. More than 160 people have reportedly been made sick. Of those infected in the outbreak, 88 have been hospitalized, including a Wisconsin woman who died. Two other deaths have been reported in suspected cases — a child in Idaho and an elderly woman in Maryland — but officials say those cases are still being investigated.