Florida’s Senate Committee on Banking and Insurance Advances Citizens Property Insurance, Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, TRIA Bills
Mar 25, 2014
Florida’s Senate Committee on Banking and Insurance Committee (“Committee”) met today March 25, 2014.
Senator Hays presented SB 1274 to the Committee. SB 1274 exempts properties with new construction located within a county where Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (“Citizens”) provides more than 75 percent of the windstorm coverage for personal lines residential policies from the prohibition of Citizens coverage in the Coastal Barrier Resource System. The bill also allows Citizens to add an addendum to the Uniform Mitigation Verification Inspection Form to allow policyholders located in counties with a verified stronger building code to receive greater mitigation credits than currently allowed.
Senator Hays offered an amendment to require Citizens to submit an alternate windstorm mitigation discounts study to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (“OIR”). If the OIR approves the alternate study, Citizens is required to include the discounts provided by the study in the next filing of its rates. Senator Hays’ amendment also prohibits a mitigation inspector from offering inducements to insurance agents or brokers for referrals. The amendment was adopted and the bill passed as a committee substitute.
The Committee heard SM 1538 by Senator Bean, a memorial urging Congress to re-authorize the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. A strike-all amendment that makes technical changes was adopted and the bill was approved as a committee substitute.
SB 482 was taken up by the Committee. Senator Hays offered an amendment that rewrote the bill and removed the provisions that would have lowered the claims paying capacity of the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (“FHCF”). The amendment would also earmark $1 million from FHCF investment revenues to fund the activities of the Florida State University Catastrophic Storm Risk Management Center. The amendment was adopted and the bill passed as a committee substitute.
To view the meeting materials, click here.
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