The Florida Insurance Roundup from Lisa Miller & Associates

By: The Florida Insurance Roundup from Lisa Miller & Associates
  • Summary

  • "The Florida Insurance Roundup" podcast from Lisa Miller & Associates, is your program on the people, issues, and regulations shaping Florida’s Insurance Market. Lisa, a former deputy insurance commissioner, brings you the latest developments in Property & Casualty, Healthcare, Workers' Compensation, Litigation, and Surplus Lines insurance from around the Sunshine State. She is a nationally-recognized disaster insurance and recovery expert. Based in the state capital of Tallahassee, Lisa Miller & Associates provides its clients with focused, intelligent, and cost conscious solutions to their business development, government consulting, and public relations needs. On the web at www.LisaMillerAssociates.com or call 850-222-1041 or email at info@LisaMillerAssociates.com. Your questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome! The Listener Call-In Line for your recorded questions and comments to air in future episodes is 850-388-8002.

    Copyright 2024 The Florida Insurance Roundup from Lisa Miller & Associates
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Episodes
  • Episode 52: Episode 52 – Agent Roundtable
    Aug 30 2024

    What’s going on with property insurance in Florida? Specifically rates, coverage, condominiums, automobile insurance, telematics, flood insurance, and the reinsurance costs that carriers pass along to consumers.


    Former Florida Deputy Insurance Commissioner Lisa Miller gets to the heart of the issues with three experienced insurance agents in South, Central, and North Florida who share their insights and suggestions on improving Florida’s challenging property insurance market.


    Show Notes


    Host Lisa Miller and guests discussed the high premiums affecting homeowners and auto insurance, driven by catastrophic weather, inflation, litigation, and reinsurance costs. Positive trends such as rate decreases and more flexible coverage options are highlighted. The conversation also covered the critical need for flood insurance and the role of the news media in educating the public about insurance complexities and how agents can help the media do so. The episode underscores the importance of transparency and proactive communication in the industry.


    Miller’s guests each brought unique perspectives from different regions of Florida:

    • Jay Wolfberg, President of We Insure, headquartered in Sunrise. Wolfberg has over a decade of experience in commercial and residential property insurance. He discusses positive trends in the market, including rate decreases and more creative coverage options.
    • Anna Regina Myrrha, Agency Principal and Broker at American Insurance Pointe (AIP) in Orlando. Myrrha shares insights on the stabilization of rates and the importance of adapting coverage to meet clients' needs.
    • Paul Lalonde, President of Insurance Wagon, a Jacksonville insurance agency. Lalonde provides a perspective on the homeowners as well as the commercial insurance market and the challenges posed by recent legislation affecting condominium insurance.

    Overview of the Florida Insurance Market

    Host Miller highlighted the current state of the Florida insurance market, where premiums for automobile, homeowners, and commercial insurance are at an all-time high. She identified four main factors driving these rates:

    1. Catastrophic Weather: Florida's susceptibility to hurricanes and other severe weather events significantly impacts insurance costs.
    2. Inflation: Rising costs of goods and services contribute to higher insurance premiums.
    3. Litigation: Legal fees and settlements from lawsuits lead to increased insurance costs.
    4. Reinsurance Costs: The cost of reinsurance, which insurers purchase to protect themselves from large claims, is a significant factor in premium pricing, comprising upward of 40% of a homeowners insurance premium.

    Host Miller emphasized the uncertainty surrounding reinsurance costs, especially with the ongoing hurricane season, and the potential for higher rates if a significant hurricane occurs.


    Positive Trends in Homeowners Insurance

    Rate Decreases and Stabilization


    Host Miller highlighted a recent report from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation that 12 companies have requested rate decreases, while 25 have sought to maintain their current rates. For example, American Integrity Insurance Company has announced a nearly 7% rate decrease for a significant number of policyholders... (For full Show Notes, visit https://lisamillerassociates.com/episode-52-agent-roundtable/)


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    34 mins
  • Episode 51: Episode 51 – Florida’s Expanding Flood Zones
    Jul 30 2024

    High-risk flood zones are expanding this year along significant stretches of Florida’s coastline. In Broward County, nearly 90,000 properties have been moved into a FEMA flood zone. But 80,000 of them were in such a zone prior to ten years ago, when FEMA moved them out – only to add them back in this year. Many will now have to purchase flood insurance.


    Former Florida Deputy Insurance Commissioner Lisa Miller talks with the county floodplain manager for an explanation, the reporter who broke the story, and another reporter from Palm Beach County, which is fighting FEMA’s efforts to expand flood zones.


    Show Notes


    FEMA calls these high-risk flood zones Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA). They are designated on a FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map as zones that begin with the letter “A” or the letter “V” for those living along the coast, subject to additional threat of storm surge. Properties in these zones supposedly have a 1% probability of flooding each year, or about a one-in-four chance every 25-30 years. Some refer to this as the 1-in-100-year flood probability.


    FEMA’s 2024 updated maps have moved nearly 90,000 (88,913) properties in Broward County, Florida into a high-risk flood zone. But almost 80,000 (79,689) were in that zone prior to FEMA’s 2014 map update, then removed, and now 10 years later are back in a flood zone. “How did this happen and what’s the science behind it?” asked host Miller.


    Carlos Adorisio,
    Floodplain Manager for the unincorporated area of Broward County, explained that FEMA flood maps are based on studies of two factors: rainfall and coastal storm surge. Maps from the 1980’s and 1990’s reflected most of the county was high-risk. “In 2014, FEMA updated the maps, but they only updated the portion for the rainfall risk and not for the storm surge. There was a lot of development and better modeling and a lot of areas were removed from the 100-year floodplain,” he explained. In its 2024 maps, FEMA updated only the coastal storm surge risk. “There’s been more development, updated storm data, and better computer modeling techniques and mapping,” since the last storm surge studies done in the 1980’s, said Adorisio, who is a Professional Engineer and a Certified Floodplain Manager.


    “One of the components of storm surge is the sea level, which is higher than they accounted for in the 80’s and therefore the storm surge is higher in this study,” Adorisio explained. “Now the southern part of the county is lower than the middle and northern sections of the county...and it's to the point where FEMA believes that the higher storm surge elevation not only goes to I-95, it goes all the way to U.S. 27, which is close to the Everglades levee. That’s why you have those almost 90,000 parcels that are increasing in flood risk and now in the Special Flood Hazard Area,” said Adorisio, who earlier in his career worked for FEMA as a technical consultant for flood maps.


    Ron Hurtibise
    , business reporter for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, first reported the scope of the 2024 flood map changes. The new high-risk flood zones are primarily located along... (For full Show Notes, visit https://lisamillerassociates.com/episode-51-floridas-expanding-flood-zones/)

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    33 mins
  • Episode 50: Episode 50 – Dollar Sale on Flood Damage
    Jun 19 2024

    A new working paper from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that for every dollar spent to elevate or buy-out a flooded home, $2.69 would be saved in future costs over the next 30 years. Of the 1.3 million projects the paper identifies, roughly 138,000 would see a greater savings of $6 dollars. Total savings would amount to $519 billion in future damage if governments and homeowners together would spend $193 billion today.


    Former Florida Deputy Insurance Commissioner Lisa Miller sat down with one of the paper’s co-authors and the head of a national home floodproofing solutions company to discuss the government’s current efforts – and what’s lacking – to avoid costly future flood damage across the nation.


    Show Notes


    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the research arm of the U.S. Congress, tasked with providing nonpartisan analysis for lawmakers to consider when making policy. Its May 2024 working paper, Flood Damage Avoided by Potential Spending on Property-Level Adaptations found:

    • There are opportunities for adaptation for approximately 1.3 million projects nationwide (each adapting a single property of one to four units) where the expected avoided damage exceeds project costs primarily from elevating the home above flood stage or a buyout of the property for later destruction.
    • The total cost of completing these projects would be $193 billion, preventing $519 billion of expected damage over 30 years.
    • On average, each dollar spent on these projects would avoid $2.69 of expected damage.
    • About 138,000 projects would result in expected avoided damage over six times the cost of the project.
    • Outcomes vary based on area income and geography.

    “We started looking into federal spending on adaptation to flood risk and we found that there's a big literature out there, but it can be really difficult to compare across studies, and apply one context to another,” explained paper co-author Evan Herrnstadt. “So we would need a scalable and flexible approach and found it was feasible for us to use the National Structure Inventory from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and flood modeling from the First Street Foundation and combine that with some other work to estimate avoided damage from property level interventions like buyouts and elevations,” said Herrnstadt, who is a CBO economist. The national framework that CBO developed used inland and coastal residential properties that contain 1 to 4 housing units.


    While the CBO doesn’t make policy recommendations to Congress, Herrnstadt said in this report, it does characterize sets of projects and different allocation schemes to provides potential opportunities to avoid flood damage paid principally by federal, state, and local governments, together with homeowners. The paper notes that FEMA has multiple programs that fund property-level adaptation. From fiscal years 2008 to 2019, annual obligations for those programs totaled about $280 million, representing an average of 29% of the amount FEMA has obligated for hazard mitigation.


    “Evan this is fantastic work,” said Tom Little, President & CEO of Floodproofing.com, an integrated company providing property risk analysis, wet and dry floodproofing solutions, and flood insurance. “This is the type of information that we need to get out there to continue to build awareness that we can actually invest money and get a strong return on that investment, by retrofitting the existing infrastructure that we have... (For full Show Notes, visit https://lisamillerassociates.com/episode-50-dollar-sale-on-flood-damage/)

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    30 mins

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