WEBVTT

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florida homeowners have faced skyrocketing insurance premiums and I have

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Jeffrey Schwitters here, he did an article about this

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and it looks like there's a compounding issue on this

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one and it has to do even with the agency

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that's overlooking insurance companies here in florida, Jeff.

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Tell us about it is a problem because the one

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aspect of this crisis that the Legislature isn't focusing on

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is whether there needs to be more regulation, more

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enforcement here. A lot of talk about litigation going

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up and lawyers and roofers and fraud, but you

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don't hear about the bad faith on the side of

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the insurance industry, when they deny claims, when

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they delay paying claims and when people are stuck.

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And every few years, we keep running into this

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problem where the insurance companies are running out of money

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and going out of business. And we find evidence

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of a lot of these companies are not following the

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statutes, they're falling short of how much money they're

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supposed to have in the bank. But when they

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are audited or when the regulators find that they're coming

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up short, they're not finding them. They're not

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enforcing them or leveling sanctions Other than to say,

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OK, we see you're dropping the ball on a

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B and C. Make sure that you fix these

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problems the next time you come around. It's interesting

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though, is, as your article mentioned, we

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haven't had a hurricane hit land in florida for about

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four years now. It seems like legislation has been

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propping insurance companies up and you would think it would

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help. But at this point it's not in fact

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, this is probably the largest policy issue that the

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legislature's had to tackle, Not just for the last

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few years, but really since 1992 with Hurricane Andrew

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and the the massive amount of destruction that occurred there

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and exposed a lot of faults in the insurance industry

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. And they, you know, enacted legislation to

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fix that created citizens insurance, they're in good shape

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. But all these other companies out there that are

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on shaky financial ground, you know, the real

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question is what happens when a major hurricane hits florida

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. Again, as you said, we haven't been

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, we haven't had landfall since 2018 and here we

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are. As many as 10 companies have, are

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in liquidation and some of these companies have thousands,

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tens of thousands of policyholders. And if a private

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company won't pick them up, the state citizens is

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gonna have to pick them up, which increases the

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burden of state taxpayers. So if we get hit

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by a major storm, the way this system is

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structured, ultimately, you know, taxpayers are the

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ones who are gonna pay the bill. You know

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, if the property insurance market fails