October 3, 2024, WTVT-TV Fox 13, Tampa – Disaster insurance and recovery expert Lisa Miller live interview on the market impacts of Hurricane Helene. (Original story location: https://lisamillerassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Lisa-On-Helene-Market-Impacts-On-WTVT-TV-10-3-24-optom.mp4)
TAMPA, Fla. – Transcript of interview, with timecode:
Russell Rhodes 00:00
Joining us is Lisa Miller. She’s a disaster insurance recovery expert. Now, as you’ve probably been watching, Lisa’s been joining us by Zoom from Tallahassee, but she’s here in Tampa. She’s in the studio this morning. Good to see you. Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it so much. So you’re so good, and we and we just love having you here. And I know these are really tough times for a lot of people, but your advice has been great. So you’ve been touring. You’ve been seeing. What are you seeing?
Lisa Miller 00:25
Such devastation… Russ, I was ground zero for Hurricane Andrew in 1992. I mean, I was in my 20s at the time, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Of course, I am trying to understand the force of that water.
Russell Rhodes 00:39
Let’s talk about that, because we all are.
Lisa Miller 00:43
The fact that it goes over bridges and then collapses the bridges, the fact that it shifts entire panels of an interstate like we’ve seen in North Carolina, you know, and the other devastation that we’ve seen in North Carolina, but even among, you know, our beautiful Tampa Bay area. I was talking to somebody yesterday about all the sand, and the debris haulers are going to be moving all that sand, but I learned that they’re going to be filtering that and, you know, and replacing it and putting it back. But what is that process and how long does that take? And I said, but in the meantime, if you can’t get it all through that process, he said, we constantly are pulling it out of the Gulf. We go, you know, miles and miles, and bring it back in. So the beach will come back. It will. We know that. Mother Nature was pretty rough.
Russell Rhodes 01:16
We’re gonna do a tape interview later about rebuilding and what your recommendations are when people get to the point, where they have to rebuild. But there’s one more thing I want to ask you about. It showed up in the Business Journal today and I know you’ve read it since we found it in the Tampa Bay Business Journal. You said that this is a manageable event in that, in terms of property insurance, it’s not gonna be, it’s gonna be, obviously, probably some, but this is more a flood insurance issue than property insurance. But this business journal article talks about how the fact that now that we’re not so lucky anymore around here. We always thought Tampa is not gonna get a storm. Well now climate change, the water’s hotter, the storms are bigger, and that our property insurance could go up because of that. What do you think?
Lisa Miller 01:49
You know, I was looking at the statistics in that article, and it talked about the average premium in Tampa was about $3,600 about $300 a month, and that in Miami it was about $600 a month. Well, if you think about it, a $300,000 home in Tampa is a $600,000 home in Miami. So it stands to reason that the premiums in Miami are going to be more than Tampa. I’m not convinced that…unless we see repeatedly storms hitting this area, reinsurers around the world look at the entire global weather conditions when they’re establishing our rates. Remember, reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies. 40-cents of every dollar that we pay in premium here in the Tampa Bay area pays the reinsurers. By law, insurance companies have to have reinsurance to keep their doors open, to back up what they collect in premium. So I think we’ll have, we may see a modest increase, but the reinsurers I’ve been talking to about this storm are taking a wait and see approach. They’re looking to see, you know, what the property insurance outcome will be, and they’ll make their decisions next year. But I don’t see a dramatic increase. But again, property values and to compare Miami to Tampa, their property values are double.
Russell Rhodes 02:45
Gotta leave it here for a minute. You and I are gonna tape something but thank you, as always.
Lisa Miller 02:48
You’re welcome. Thank you for what you do.
Russell Rhodes 02:50
Lisa Miller of Lisa Miller and Associates.
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