April marks the beginning of the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) new rate change, and as a former deputy insurance commissioner in Florida, it is welcomed news not only for those residing along Florida’s miles and miles of coastline, but …
Lisa’s Blog
Risk Rating 2.0 begins
As it has numerous times in recent years, Congress has extended authorization for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) until early December, as part of a continuing resolution to keep the U.S. government operating while budget talks continue. Unaffected is …
Blue-Green Algae Turning Deadly
With the rising summer temperatures come rising blue-green algae levels in some prominent Florida lakes and waterways. There are now reports of people getting sick from the cyanobacteria that can be present in the algae and a dog dying from …
Florida Leads in Avoided Losses in FEMA Building Codes Study
FEMA is out with a report showing the value of mitigation in having – and following – modern building codes. FEMA modeled 18.1 million buildings built in the U.S. since 2000 and found that the nation has benefited to the …
Nuisance Flooding Becoming Worse: 2 of 15 Florida tide stations set records
Florida has seen a trend in the past decade of rising sea levels along its coastlines. It’s been causing high-tide flooding in a few areas, which is growing in severity, according to a new report from the National Oceanic and …
Coronavirus & the Florida Market
As we enter the second week of the partial business re-opening of Florida, virus-related insurance claims are being filed, insurance companies are fighting back in court, and the industry is making dire predictions on its future. A national data call …
How a $41,000 Plumbing Leak Turned Into a $1.2 Million Attorney Fee
Florida’s fee-shifting statute authorizes an attorney to recover a “reasonable fee” when their client prevails. To calculate the award, Florida courts follow the federal Lodestar method which multiplies the hours reasonably expended by a reasonable hourly rate.
However, in 2017 …
A Disaster Resilience Framework: Investing now to pay less later
Under the assumption that it cannot control severe weather, nor deny recovery money to communities struck by future catastrophes, the federal government is developing a framework for how best to invest its finite taxpayer resources into more efficient and effective …
A Personal Look at Dorian’s Destruction
In last week’s LMA Newsletter, I mentioned two recent trips I took to the Bahamas with a longtime Florida insurance company executive to examine Hurricane Dorian damage first-hand. This up-close and personal video highlights the findings of those trips, …
Examining Florida’s Hurricane Vulnerabilities
Is Florida’s building code protecting all of us? That’s what we asked in two recent episodes of The Florida Insurance Roundup podcast. “It’s not that we expect to have no damage when we have a Category 5 hurricane, but we …
