risk transfer

Broking group WTW, working with the Mesoamerican Reef Fund and InsuResilience Solutions Fund, has announced a renewal and expansion of the innovative parametric hurricane insurance program to protect the coral reef, while adding additional capacity from reinsurance firm Munich Re.

In an exclusive interview with Artemis, Joseph Petrelli, President and Co-Founder of rating agency and consultant Demotech, Inc. explained that the special session reforms passed by the Florida legislature last week are “inadequate”, when measured against what the state really needs to fix its property insurance marketplace.

Progress on property insurance reform continues in the state of Florida, with the first bill from the special session now passing through the legislature having been approved on the House floor, to now make its way to the Governor for signing.

Florida’s lawmakers continue to progress new legislation that they hope will stabilise the states dysfunctional property insurance market, with the package of bills now passing the Senate and heading to the House today.

Florida’s insurance carriers face one problem above all others, the fact that they are over-litigated and being badly affected by a litigious property insurance claims environment where fraud has been de rigueur.

Florida’s Legislature made progress on some of the property insurance reform bills that were heard by a committee yesterday, moving them on to the Senate, but the details underlying the reforms will matter for the reinsurance market and the prospects of meaningful change.

Driving home the seriousness of the situation in Florida’s property insurance market today, the sponsor of one of the bills being discussed at the special legislative session in Tallahassee said on the floor that some carriers in the state are “on life support.”

Industry contacts have been raising concerns over the weekend, that proposed property insurance related legislation set to be raised during Florida’s special session of the legislature this week will not go far enough on litigation and won’t do enough to bring reinsurance market confidence back to the state.

The Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis expects the special session of the legislature will deliver “really significant reforms” to Florida’s property insurance sector, that he believes can stabilise the marketplace there.

Having previously warned that the Florida insurance market has spent the last 30 years kicking the can of its problems down the road, a road that is now running out, ALIRT analysis now suggests the market is at a “flash point” moment, where it risks reinsurance capital pulling-back even more significantly.