The legislative bundle addressing the state’s property insurance coverage disaster contains many payments handed by lawmakers at a particular session, corresponding to H.B. 1D, which creates the Reinsurance to Help Policyholders in order that Florida insurance coverage corporations can faucet right into a $2 billion pool for his or her two best loss occasions in a 12 months, as much as 90% of the losses above a retention. H.B. 1D and its equivalent companion invoice, S.B. 2D, handed by a vote of 95-14 on Wednesday.
Rep. Andrew Discovered, D-Brandon, stated the payments will not lead to decrease premiums or forestall extra Floridians from having protection dropped with the elevated frequency and severity of weather-related occasions. Discovered unsuccessfully tried to amend RAP, which he stated was a bailout to the insurance coverage business.
Discovered prompt reinforcing the Florida Hurricane Disaster Fund in order that insurance coverage carriers may entry $2 billion in state reserves. He stated the cash earmarked for the RAP program ought to go to shoppers who’re again at dwelling fighting paying for larger gasoline and hire and who’re anxious about their well being care payments.
Home Appropriations Committee Chair Jay Trumbull, R-Panama Metropolis, who sponsored the payments, pointed to client financial savings with the $150 million added to the My Protected Florida House Program. Underneath that current program, Floridians can faucet into funds to reconfigure their houses with safer and extra resistant supplies to deal with hurricane damages.
On Wednesday, Florida legislators additionally unanimously handed reforms to the Florida Condominium Act to forestall one other tragedy just like the one in Surfside, Florida, wherein 98 individuals died within the collapse of a condominium advanced. Underneath S.B. 4D, lawmakers added new measures that will implement common constructing inspections statewide and make sure that condominium associations had been sustaining adequate reserves.
Litigation reform was additionally a red-hot subject in these payments, although each side disagree on who’s at fault. The insurance coverage business blamed the hostile authorized atmosphere in Florida as the explanation for premiums going up for owners and because the trigger for some insurers not renewing insurance policies or going bancrupt.
One of many payments signed Thursday locations restrictions on using legal professional price multipliers in an award and clarifies when a bad-faith go well with could be filed. The invoice additionally prevents owners from transferring their rights in property insurance coverage litigation — via an project of advantages — to a 3rd celebration.
Rep. Dotie Joseph, D-Miami, stated it’s dangerous to remove one of many few instruments that owners have going up in opposition to insurance coverage carriers and their attorneys: a bad-faith declare. She stated there are individuals ready years to be paid and that they need to be allowed entry to the courts when an insurer fails.
Trumbull stated the payments weren’t seeking to get rid of the bad-faith declare.
Rep. Matt Willhite, D-Wellington, challenged the oft-cited determine from the insurance coverage business that about 79% of the nation’s owners insurance coverage litigation is in Florida however that the state accounts for 9% of property insurance coverage claims within the U.S. With out being proven that knowledge, he stated he could not confirm and belief it.
It is a minimum of six to 12 months earlier than owners see aid from this legislative bundle, Willhite warned, although he stated he would nonetheless vote for the payments, as they’re making an attempt to deal with issues that are not going away.
“This bundle represents probably the most vital reforms to Florida’s owners insurance coverage market in a era,” DeSantis stated in a launch Thursday. “These payments will assist stabilize a problematic market, assist Floridians harden their houses via the My Protected Florida House Program, and pave the best way for extra decisions for owners.”
–Further reporting by Shawn Rice. Modifying by Emily Kokoll.
For a reprint of this text, please contact reprints@law360.com.
