Fla. Bill Would Provide Consumers With a Policy Checklist

A bill that provides consumers with a checklist so they know what’s covered in their insurance policies, and changes state law on what insurers have to pay out if a home is destroyed has received preliminary approval from the Florida Senate.

The Senate is expected to take a final vote today, but will have to reach an agreement with their counterparts in the House of Representatives to pass the insurance package this year.

“There’s no handshake on this yet,” Sen. Rudy Garcia, R-Hialeah, chairman of the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. “This has to be a pro-consumer bill for me to continue to work on it.”

The checklist helps accomplish that, Garcia said. People will get with their policies a list that outlines everything covered — and not covered — in their policies.

Still up in the air: Whether the two sides can concur on changing the valued policy law, which requires insurers to pay to rebuild destroyed property.

Insurance companies want to undo a 4th District Court of Appeal ruling requiring them to pay the full amount of a policy to repair a home deemed a total loss, regardless of what caused the damage.

The Senate’s bill allows insurance companies to only pay for damage they cover, meaning a wind insurer wouldn’t pay for flood damage. It will not allow the change to be applied retroactively to last year’s hurricanes.

Some provisions came out of the Senate bill, including allowing state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. to change the rates it charges in places like South Florida, where there aren’t many private company options to buy homeowner insurance.

Garcia said that keeping the Citizens rate provision intact could have meant dramatically increasing premiums rather than cutting them.

Other changes are coming. Garcia told the Sun-Sentinel he plans to introduce today a provision to create a task force that would examine the state’s insurance market, including ways to fix Citizens, which was roundly criticized after last year’s hurricanes for bad customer service and other problems.

The bill emerged after days of negotiations between House and Senate leaders.

Insurance lobbyists who pushed for a change to the valued policy law were pleased with the Senate’s action on that subject. “The fact that the Senate kept [the change] in is, from our point of view, one of the most significant things the Senate has done this session,” Sam Miller, executive vice president of the Florida Insurance Council said.

Topics Florida