Fla. Gov.Suggests Property Insurers not Following Rate Savings Law

Gov. Charlie Crist suggested Tuesday that some property insurers may be deliberately flouting a new state law that requires them to buy cheaper reinsurance and pass the savings on to consumers.

Crist said he was concerned that some insurers might be “playing a game” with recent rate filings, by buying more private backup coverage than they need in an effort to undermine the state’s effort to lower consumer rates. He has been needling insurance companies for months about high rates.

“That’s the game we have to figure out, and it’s not a funny game,” Crist said during a Cabinet meeting. “They’re not passing those savings on … It’s the law – and there are consequences to not adhering to the law.”

The Legislature passed the law in January to lower wind coverage premiums, by opening up the state’s Hurricane Catastrophe Fund to cover more of the underlying risk for big storms. That backup coverage is provided at lower cost than private reinsurance, and insurers were told to give those savings to consumers.

But many companies don’t appear to be doing that, and are filing for higher rates than Crist and Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty think are fair.

“We fully expect the companies to provide the rate relief anticipated by the Legislature and I think the governor was very clear that we are going to use all the resources of our office to ensure compliance,” McCarty said.

Insurance companies said they must charge enough so they can pay claims if there is a storm. If they don’t charge rates that will give them enough to honor their commitments, the state would frown on that too, said Mark Delegal, a lobbyist for State Farm Insurance.

And, he said, the hostile stance the state is taking makes insurance companies less likely to want to do business in Florida. Delegal said the state was far beyond using a stick rather than a carrot to deal with insurance companies.

“We need to be trying to encourage people to come to Florida and do business to insure homes, and not using baseball bats to command attention,” Delegal said. “Unfortunately, that seems the pathway of some.”

State insurance officials calculated earlier this year that the average savings for Florida customers based on the new law would be around 24 percent – although insurance companies expressed significant skepticism about that presumption.

But when insurance companies started filing for new rates, they were showing much smaller savings, around 12 percent on average. Some insurance companies filed for increased rates.

And even the companies that filed for lower rates are now, in some cases, coming back with amended filings that eliminate those decreases based on new calculations made after they had finalized their reinsurance contracts for the year.

For example, USAA, Florida’s fourth-largest home insurer, recently filed a request for a statewide average rate increase of nearly 54 percent.

Floridians had been clamoring for relief from homeowners insurance rates that have dramatically increased – more than doubling for many customers -after back-to-back bad hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005, when the state suffered just under $40 billion in insured damages.

McCarty agreed with Crist that many companies appear not to be following through on what the law required. He said reinsurance costs for the companies is going down because of the new law.

“But what we’re seeing is additional profiteering on the parts of companies, they want more rates of return,” McCarty said.

Meanwhile, McCarty said Tuesday that his agency denied a proposed 7.1 percent average decrease in State Farm property insurance rates as not big enough.

State Farm, Florida’s largest private home insurer, had said in January that the company would be able to cut rates by about 7 percent under the new law.

McCarty said the Office of Insurance Regulation’s analysts determined after reviewing what State Farm is paying for its backup reinsurance that the 7.1 percent rate decrease doesn’t pass on enough savings to consumers.

“Therefore, we’re directing the company to make a filing for an additional at least 4 or 5 percent to ensure that we have compliance with the law,” McCarty said.

McCarty also said this week that his office was issuing subpoenas to State Farm to explain why its rate requests shouldn’t be reduced more after the company said it would drop 50,000 coastal policies next year. The company said the delay in shedding the policies until 2008 is part of the reason that the lowered risk isn’t factored in.

Sam Miller, a spokesman for the Florida Insurance Council, which represents several private insurers, said tough talk is easier when customers aren’t asking companies to pay claims. When they need a new roof, people want insurance companies to have plenty of money – and he noted the busy part of hurricane season is just starting.

“August is when the fun begins,” Miller said. “In six weeks, this same meeting might have a little bit different tone, because we may have had two hurricanes by then.”

Topics Florida Carriers Legislation Hurricane Reinsurance Property