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Homeowners fed up with property insurance rates continuously sky-rocketing

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Dozens of Florida homeowners insured by Citizens Property Insurance are complaining about the abrupt price hike in their property insurance.

The homeowner’s insurance industry is in crisis in Florida. More and more homeowners are getting dropped by their insurance companies, forcing them to pay for Citizens Property Insurance.

In just one year, the policy count for the state-backed insurance company has grown from 750,000 policies to more than 1.5 million Florida homeowners, and the increased number of Citizen’s policyholders has caused some insurance premiums to double.

Insurance Agent Sean Way told News4JAX there’s an increased demand for policies from Citizens insurance following the damage from Hurricane Ian in Central Florida in 2022. Way said several insurance carriers stopped offering coverage for certain zip codes that experienced historic damage during the storm.

“Our homeowner’s insurance increased $3,500 since last year. I want to know why it increases greatly each year with no claims,” one Insider shared with News4JAX.

Way said while homeowners are seeing exponential price hikes for their policies, insurance companies are seeing positive effects from new insurance regulations passed during a special session.

“The effects that the legislation has had for our carrier partners are from the standpoint of getting away with one-way attorney fees, where the carriers were responsible for paying those fees. It has put the carriers in a position where they’re opening up more capacity,” Way said. “And when we say that, that means they’re writing in areas that they wouldn’t have written before, for various underwriting reasons. In time, the legislation should have a positive impact on our industry and our citizens of the state of Florida.”

Insurance agents said that property insurance relief would not happen anytime soon because of potential natural disasters this year. On the other hand, if Florida

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April 8, 2023 by INSURANCE

Digital Technology Is Transforming The Insurance Industry
(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Published: Fri 10 Mar 2023, 9:12 AM

Gargash Insurance is witnessing a robust year-on-year growth in business through its online channels, said Suresh Nair, executive director, Gargash Insurance Services. The firm is registering about 150-200 per cent rise in premium through online sales, a trend that is generally reflective of the industry at large where players using insurtech are increasingly making deeper inroads.

Insurtech is also helping transform traditional brokers and insurance companies and shoring up sales online.

‘Digital technology is transforming the insurance industry in ways that are benefiting all the major stakeholders the consumers, insurance companies, and the brokers. At Gargash, we have seen a three-digit growth in business year-on-year through online channels in the last two years. Even allowing for a relatively smaller base, it is still suggestive of the changing consumer behavior and acceptance of technology backed initiatives,’ said Nair.

Insurtech refers to technological innovations that are created and implemented to improve the efficiency of the insurance industry. The global insurtech market size was valued at $5.45 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 52.7 per cent from 2023 to 2030, as per industry reports.

Scattered and siloed data, however, is among the biggest hindrances to the evolution of insurtech in the region. ‘Insurance is reliant on data and insurers have huge amounts of data sitting in vertical silos not talking to each other. Currently, there is limited sharing and strategic use of data among, say, claims, underwriting and accounts departments of insurance companies. Once we start leveraging the power of big data, AI, blockchain etc., we should start to see a huge difference. At the moment, many insurance companies, having recognised the power of insurtech, are addressing legacy issues with their operating and

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April 4, 2023 by INSURANCE

M&A deals to boost non-life insurance industry | Business
M&A deals to boost non-life insurance industry hinh anh 1(Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNS/VNA) – The non-life insurance sector has seen a flurry of
merger and acquisition (M&A) deals over the past two years, partly
reflecting the attractiveness and keen competition of the market, which still
has room for growth.

DB Insurance, which is one of the Republic of Korea’s leading non-life
insurance companies, has just completed another step of its purchase strategy
to take control of Vietnam National Aviation Insurance Company (VNI).

Expectations of fresh momentum from foreign capital inflows helped VNI’s stock
prices soar last week.

The transfer value is determined by the two parties’ agreement, but it is
estimated to be worth about a trillion dong at the current market price.

VNI has a charter capital of 1 trillion VND (42.2 million USD), which is the
largest charter capital in M&A deals over the past two years. Three
noteworthy M&A transactions in the insurance sector occurred during this
time, but the parties involved were not experts in the non-life sector.

In particular, VPBank increased its shareholding of OPES Insurance from 6.05
million units to 53.9 million units last November, or 98% of charter capital,
by purchasing an additional 47.85 million shares of the company.

Additionally, in the fourth quarter of 2022, Tasco spent more than 402 billion VND
to acquire Groupama Vietnam’s entire share capital, changing the company’s name
to Tasco Insurance. The plan calls for Tasco to invest an additional 612
billion VND in this business.

Previously, in September 2021, BCG invested a total of 316.5 billion VND to
acquire a controlling interest in AAA Insurance.

Vietnam was one of the insurance marketplaces with the highest growth rates in
the world prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Statistics for 2011–2019 showed that
the country’s annual growth rate in insurance premium revenue was 20% while the
global average

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March 28, 2023 by INSURANCE

Non Owner Car Insurance Guide

Non-owner car insurance is for people who regularly drive cars they don’t own. This includes borrowing someone else’s car, driving rental cars and taking part in car-sharing services. If you have a valid driver’s license and don’t own a vehicle, non-owner car insurance may be a valuable policy to have.

What does a non-owner car insurance policy cover?

A non-owner car insurance policy covers the minimum requirements in your state. In New Jersey, that means liability insurance, personal injury protection (PIP) and uninsured motorist coverage.

Although you can buy more coverage, the minimum car insurance requirements for each coverage in New Jersey are:

  • Bodily injury liability insurance: $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident.
  • Property damage liability insurance: $25,000 per accident.
  • PIP: $15,000 per person, per accident.
  • Uninsured motorist: Matches bodily injury and property damage liability limits.

There is no option for comprehensive or collision coverage under a named non-owner car insurance policy. These coverages will pay for damage to an owned vehicle listed on the policy. Since non-owner car insurance doesn’t cover a named vehicle, there is no physical damage coverage.

Who needs non-owner car insurance?

There are some situations when someone who doesn’t own their own car needs non-owner car insurance.

Keeping continuous coverage

When you go without car insurance — even if it’s because you temporarily don’t own a car — the gap in insurance can cause your rates to be higher when you get another vehicle. Buying a non-owner policy might help keep your car insurance rates low if you only plan to be without a car temporarily.

You regularly rent cars

Whether you’re renting from Hertz or Enterprise or using a service like Turo or Zipcar, it could be a good idea to get non-owner car insurance. Car-sharing and rental companies often

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March 25, 2023 by INSURANCE

How Tech Is Breathing New Life Into Life Insurance

What You Need to Know

  • Completing post-death processes can take a life insurance beneficiary an average of about 420 hours.
  • Families need logistical support.
  • They also need emotional support.

The life insurance industry offers more than just policies: Carriers also strive to provide their customers with comfort, stability, and peace of mind.

When someone buys life insurance, they do so trusting that the insurer will be present and involved in fulfilling the promise of the policy by distributing the money responsibly.

On top of this, in our digital age, consumers expect instant, seamless services that provide comprehensive support beyond the payout.

Fortunately, several technology companies have emerged to help insurance companies embrace — and even benefit from — the digital era.

That’s critical at a time when, along with trust and stability, customers are seeking an improved experience from every product or service they purchase.

To offer an elevated customer experience, insurance companies must be willing to embrace cutting-edge technologies that will allow them to adjust to changing consumer expectations.

Streamlining Complicated Processes

By embracing emerging innovations in areas of life insurance that can easily benefit from new technologies, such as onboarding and payouts, life insurance companies can increase customer satisfaction while also optimizing their own operations.

It’s a true win-win proposition that can streamline underwriting and claims services while fostering connectivity and bolstering the data-sharing needed to provide more tailored policies.

Digital-era models of life insurance are already being used to leverage automation for more convenient registration, enabling customers to complete complex processes without becoming overwhelmed by the bureaucratic labyrinth of it all.

Insurtech companies like Lemonade were, in fact, built around customers’ modern-day expectations of once-sluggish processes such as registration and onboarding. These tech-turned-insurance companies leverage technology to allow customers to apply, get approved, and begin onboarding for

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March 20, 2023 by INSURANCE

Florida lawmakers property insurance reforms have not brought relief

Over the past year, state lawmakers have made changes on paper through several attempts to cure Florida’s property insurance crisis. But a homeowner in Florida who opens their annual renewal and sees their premium has increased, or finds out their carrier has suddenly dropped them, may not have noticed anything different.

That was the expectation, after all.

State Sen. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, noted during the first of last year’s special sessions to address insurance that relief from any measures taken by lawmakers wouldn’t be realized for at least another 18 months. That session took place in May 2022.

Since then, two hurricanes hit the state. Lawmakers then held a second special session on insurance in December. Six property insurance companies were declared insolvent last year. Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-run “insurer of last resort,” continues to grow with more than 1 million policies.

More:Hurricane Ian is gone. Before the next storm, here are tips on how to review your insurance policy

More:The property insurance market was melting down. Then Hurricane Ian flooded Southwest Florida

And now the annual, 60-day regular legislative session is underway. The session is largely where party-line battles are taking center stage, but not insurance. And those homeowners with delayed or unfulfilled property damage claims may find their legal recourses slashed, owing to legislation approved in the special sessions to limit what the insurance industry and lawmakers said was too much litigation over property insurance claims and disputes between homeowners and their insurers.

The story remains the same as it was a year ago: it’s lawyers, contractors and public adjusters versus lawmakers and insurance companies.

Some have lauded the measures passed in Tallahassee as necessary to lure insurance carriers back to the state and target the cause of the crisis, so-called “frivolous lawsuits.” But

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March 19, 2023 by INSURANCE

Long Covid treatment can lead to debt after insurance denies claims

In June 2021, 32-year-old Alyssa Maness was diagnosed with POTS, a nervous system disorder that her doctors believe was triggered by Covid.

POTS, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, caused numbness throughout her arms and legs, a pins-and-needles sensation and sudden drops in her heart rate.

Because her heart problems didn’t go away, in early 2022 her doctors began conducting a series of lab tests in an attempt to better understand her long-term Covid symptoms.

When Maness submitted the testing to her insurance — Anthem Blue Cross — the provider deemed the testing medically unnecessary and decreased to cover the cost. She’s now on the hook for the medical bills, which have already cost her more than $10,000 out of pocket.

“I’m kind of at the point sadly where I’ve just been given up,” said Maness, a Ph.D. student in Sacramento, California. Many of her insurance appeals have been denied. “I don’t have the mental bandwidth to even battle this anymore, because it’s become clear that it is most likely going to be unsuccessful.”

Maness is among several long Covid patients in the United States interviewed by NBC News who say their insurance providers are declining to provide coverage related to their illness.

Alyssa Maness.
Alyssa Maness.Courtesy Alyssa Maness

But there are likely many more. Up to 4 million full-time workers are out of the labor force due to long Covid, according to research from the Brookings Institutiona Washington-based think tank.

NBC News has asked insurance providers for comment.

For some, the care they need to manage their chronic illness has left them in medical debt, which can easily balloon into the thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, experts say. It’s unclear how many are being denied coverage, but a paper published in May in JAMA Health Forum

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March 11, 2023 by INSURANCE

Louisiana incentive credit UPC policies

Some Louisiana residents will lose their homeowners insurance at the end of the month. United Property & Casualty Insurance Company policyholders will see their policies canceled by March 29. The Louisiana Department of Insurance said that companies that applied or plan to apply for the incentive program will receive credit for UPC policies taken prior to their approval of their application. Erica Olsen who lives in Westwego told WDSU she found out just a few months ago she’d have to change from UPC. “We found out late November, early December that UPC was pulling out of Louisiana and our policy was going to be canceled,” Olsen said. “We ended up finding a new insurance policy that’s in fact a blessing but it’s a $2,000 price hike.” With the credit insurers will receive from the incentive program, Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon says this will lure more insurers to the state, and restore insurance competition. “This action is aimed at helping UPC policyholders save money by avoiding Citizens and achieving our overall goal of reducing Citizens’ book of business,” Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said in an issued statement. “Reducing Citizens’ policy count stabilizes rates for its current policyholders and reduces the likelihood that every policyholder in the state will be assessed in the event of a future Katrina or Ida-level catastrophe.”UPC was placed into liquidation by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation and the Florida judicial system after its estimated losses from Hurricane Ian increased to $1.5 billion. Louisiana’s Incentive Program is offering matching grants to incentivize new and existing insurance companies to write residential and commercial policies in coastal areas, including writing policies out of Citizens, according to Donelon. “I just hope there’s insurance companies who are willing to be there when we need it most,” Olsen said. The … Read the rest

March 8, 2023 by INSURANCE

Cost of car insurance, care for the catastrophically injured at stake as Supreme Court hears no-fault case

The Michigan Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a case that will determine the kind of medical care received by nearly 15,000 people who were catastrophically injured before the state’s No Fault Insurance Act was amended in 2019.

It will also determine whether Michigan drivers will get the kind of savings on their auto insurance promised by the architects of those reforms.

The case, originally brought by two car crash victims against USAA Casualty Insurance and Citizens Insurance Co., hinges on whether newly imposed limits on payments for medical treatment apply to those whose injuries occurred before the new law was passed.

The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in August that they did not, saying nothing in the law signaled the legislature’s clear intent that it applied retroactively and that, even if that had been what lawmakers wanted, such an action would violate the Contracts Clause of the Michigan Constitution.

That decision allowed those who had suffered catastrophic injuries to resume receiving the sort of care they’d gotten prior to the new fee schedules going into effect in July of 2021, particularly care from specialized rehabilitation centers, which had seen reimbursement rates slashed by 45 percent .

It is also derived in the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association Increasing its annual assessment on all Michigan drivers by $48, saying the additional money was needed to cover an estimated $3.7 billion deficit the decision created.

Lori McAllister, the attorney representing the insurance companies, opened her argument by pointing to the costs.

“We all know auto insurance in Michigan is anything but affordable,” she said. “We get the highest rates in the country. People in urban areas struggle to buy insurance at all at affordable rates.”

The unlimited medical care that was part of the state’s previous law was a significant

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March 4, 2023 by INSURANCE

Feds expect to collect $4.7B in insurance fraud penalties

AMANDA SEITZ Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration estimates that it could collect as much as $4.7 billion from insurance companies with newer and tougher penalties for submitting improper charges on the taxpayers’ tab for Medicare Advantage care.

Federal watchdogs have been sounding the alarm for years about questionable charges on the government‘s private version of the Medicare program, with investigators raising the possibility that insurance companies could be bilking taxpayers of billions of dollars each year by claiming members are sicker than they really are to receive inflated payments.

The Department of Health and Human Services said it will begin collecting payments from insurers when an audit turns up that they are charged for diagnoses that are not reflected in the patient’s medical records. The government has not sought refunds for those payments in more than a decade, the agency said.

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“Today, we are taking some long overdue steps to move us in the direction of accountability,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said Monday.

The penalties are expected to return $4.7 billion over the next decade, the agency estimated.

The questionable payments are submitted through Medicare Advantage, a booming program that nearly half of the 60 million people enrolled in Medicare signed up for. Medicare Advantage is different from traditional Medicare, with private companies offering plans that are reimbursed by the government for care. The government spent $900 billion last year overall on Medicare.

With the rise in popularity has come growing concern that insurers are ripping off taxpayers by overstating how sick a patient is to unlock higher reimbursement from the government. The HHS Office of the Inspector General raised red flags about $6.7 billion worth of payments for patients whose diagnoses were not supported by medical records in 2017, for example.

Insurers

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February 4, 2023 by INSURANCE
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