Insurance Quotes & Advice

Although weather forecasters were predicting a busy hurricane season this year, only a single category 1 hurricane actually made landfall.  However, homeowners along the gulf coast won’t be seeing the benefits in lower rates next year.  In fact, many companies actually filed for rate increases with their state insurance boards.

With another year of strong profits, consumer groups and government officials have been quick to criticize the proposed rate increases.  In Florida especially, insurance companies have been receiving a lot of bad press recently.  That state’s legislature passed a bill earlier this year to fund a program to provide cheaper reinsurance for companies and expected some of those savings to passed on to the consumer.

Insurance companies insist that it is this type of moderate season that allows them to increase their claims paying ability for future need.  They have been quick to latch on to some weather experts’ prediction that the country is in the midst of a stronger cycle of hurricanes for the next decade.  There is also the claim that they are still recovering from previous losses.

And while it’s true that the last two years were very mild and not typical of your normal hurricane season, it could also be argued that the years of 2004 and 2005 were at the other extreme.  Who could forget those years, it seemed like every week that we looked at the news, another hurricane was about to hit the country.

So with insurance companies on one side and the consumer on the other, it’ll be up to state insurance regulators to decide what will be fair for both.