LMA NEWSLETTER January 21, 2019

An Impactful Summit

Let’s celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday today and everyday.

This past week I attended the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) Summit with over 300 insurance professionals from as far away as Canada.  For those of you who didn’t attend, you missed a terrific two days of great interaction and information with everything from how …

Freeing-Up Hurricane Michael Debris Cleanup Money

Michael created 10x more debris than Irma

Our volunteer crew from Lisa Miller & Associates helped clean-up a Panama City neighborhood last weekend.  We saw what Governor DeSantis saw a few days later when he visited and then ordered the state to speed up recovery money to affected communities: debris, debris, and more debris.

Our …

Bill Watch

The second week of legislative committee meetings

Assignment of Benefits (AOB) reform and the broader issue of excessive litigation remain a legislative priority for the 2019 Florida legislature.  There’s a renewed sense of optimism by key lawmakers that real progress will be made this session.  This will be crucial, given that the case before the …

OIR Summit Report

AOB, artificial intelligence, automated vehicles discussed

While the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) has adopted a wait-and-see stance now that the Supreme Court has taken up the Assignment of Benefits (AOB) issue, it devoted a lot of attention to the issue at its annual Summit this past week and there is much encouraging news …

Citrus Canker Payout Commences

$52 million released to affected homeowners

Florida’s other and often-forgotten natural calamity – citrus canker – has been resolved, at least from the perspective of 84,000 homeowners who had diseased trees in their yards.  After a delay of as long as 18 years in some cases, the state has reimbursed those homeowners for destroying their …

New Foreclosures Up in Florida

Overall rate continues to decline

The number of new foreclosures is on the upswing again in Florida, despite national foreclosure activity dropping to a 13-year low.  Hurricane Irma damages and related economic disruption is partly responsible.  For the country as a whole, foreclosure filings – which include new notices, auctions, and bank repossessions – were …

Florida’s Economy & Other Tidbits of Interest

New NFIP bills being floated in Congress

Unemployment in Florida remained at 3.3% going into this month as the convenience store chain Wawa announced it will hire 1,000 people for its Florida stores over the next three months.  That sort of economic expansion is positively impacting state tax collections.   Stronger than expected collections will mean …

In Search of Truth

Truth, or rather, objective truth, seems to be an elusive creature these days. No matter where you go, bias has seeped into every aspect, it seems, of our fragmented, postmodern society. This is not entirely wrong or necessarily bad, but the trouble, assuming you can recognize it, is figuring out what to do with all …