Your insurance costs won’t climb so high this year. All bets are off if we get a lot of hurricanes.
It’s so Florida.
A yearslong effort to stabilize the home insurance industry is finally paying dividends, according to state officials and insurance insiders, just as forecasters are predicting a super-charged, La Niña-driven hurricane season.
What could possibly go wrong?
Let’s start with what insurers say has gone right: Reduced losses from the reforms that quelled high litigation rates, combined with a single hurricane that hit a sparely populated area last year, convinced reinsurers — the global financiers that insure insurers — to ease back on rates charged for the upcoming hurricane season.
So companies purchased more reinsurance than they needed to and say they are prepared to pay off losses after not one but two hurricanes that could hit the state this year.
If more than two strike Florida, however, “that’s not something you normally budget for,” said Paul Handerhan, president of the Fort Lauderdale-based Federal Association for Insurance Reform.
“If that were to happen, you could see some companies experience some financial stress.”