[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Greyson

Maybe this should be in the Science thread but I could not find it. If the insurance companies are taking notice, there must be some truth to it.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...rricane-sandy/


Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled “Severe Weather in North America.” According to the press release that accompanied the report, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.”

This is interesting even tho I dont get all the science.

And, anytime insurance companies are doing "studies" it seems to be to reevaluate the actual and preceived risks so they can either orchestrate a shift of responsibility to the government for coverage i.e. specific hurricane and flood policies, or figure how to rewrite the coverage while upping the premiums to sufficient levels as to mitigate their potential losses while maintaining the expected profit margin.

I swear when it comes to trends that threaten the profit margins of insurance companies, they are 20 steps ahead of the science.

Living on the coast, I can tell you there are only a handful of insurers who will issue policies to coastal homeowners. Their reason? A catastrophic event here is inevitable. Thus, IF you can get a private policy, coverage is structured differently and the cost is astronomical.

And here is where the FAIR plan comes in. To make property insurance more readily available to people who can't obtain it from private insurers, the federal government established the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) plans in the late 1960s, according to the Insurance Information Institute (III). The plans are operated by the insurance industry and make home insurance available to property owners in the "high risk" category.

FAIR plans often cost more than private insurance and offer less coverage, but for some they offer the only home insurance available. All FAIR plans cover losses due to fire, vandalism, riot and windstorms, according to III.

The FAIR Plan, which typically serves as an insurer of last resort, became a major insurer of Cape properties after insurance companies opted in recent years to stop writing policies in Barnstable County. More than 60,000 homeowners on the Cape and Islands are insured through the FAIR Plan, which is formally known as the Massachusetts Property Insurance Underwriting Association. That represents 46.6 percent of homeowners in the area. The association is made up of all companies writing basic property insurance.

After hurricanes heavily damaged areas of the Gulf Coast and Florida in the past decade, many private insurers raised rates or did not renew policies for coastal homeowners. Insurers defended their decisions based on hurricane models and geographical history used by reinsurance companies, which basically insure insurance companies.