If you live in Florida, you’ve heard all about how property insurance carriers (hereafter referred to as Insurers or Carriers) are either discontinuing policies for Floridians or leaving Florida altogether. But, unless you work in the claims handling industry, you’re not likely to have heard the reasons for Florida’s insurance woes. What I’d like to do in this and the following blogs is touch on these issues from a few perspectives: (1) the Insurers’ perspective, (2) the contractors’ perspective, (3) the Insureds’ perspective, (4) lawyers, and (5) my experience. My experience is important because I have worked on legal cases, some for each of the previously-mentioned parties, and have first-hand experience (1) reviewing discovery and deposition files, (2) appling applicable regulatory and industry-based standards and knowledge to peer-reviewing documents, estimates and procedures related to the case, (3) and other pertinent experience. Sufficient to say, my experience has provided me a well-rounded view of the issues that exist all over the United State – not just in Florida – relative to insurance claims handling/processing. 

To begin, one must understand that the issues surrounding Florida's insurance woes isn’t singularly the fault of insurance fraud and abuse by lawyers, public adjusters, contractors and assessors. Certainly, there’s plenty of that to go around, and I’ll talk about that more later, but that’s only a part of the problem (and I’ll touch on that too as we go through this series). What you’ll be reading will demonstrate the complex and ill condition of insurance claims handling/processing that exists in Florida and its impact on home and business owners (hereafter referred to as Insureds or Policy Holders). This leads me to an important point: Why this is important to you:

Every one of us is an Insured. Every one of us holds some sort of policy or is responsible for a policy of some sort. Therefore, we’re all impacted by the things we’ll be talking about in the following blogs. The things that I’ll be discussing (1) impact the quality of services that we receive upon filing a claim, (2) can cause coverage to be denied, (3) can inflate the cost of coverages, (4) have led to an increase in exclusions in our policies, (5) can delay completion of work on a claim, and (6) other unwanted conditions to the insurance claims handling/processing. 

As we go through this discussion, I’d love to hear from you; gain your insights on the matter. You can write to me at jason@gulfcoastiaq.com anytime.