As a blogger for Insurance School Florida, I observe that Florida has been in the insurance new quite often . In Tallahassee , a man was arrested for insurance fraud because he set fire to his Yacht named “Shameless.” This guy tells it like it is . I wonder what’s his wife’s name? ”Trophy”? Did he name his first born , “Tax Deduction”?
This story comes at the same time a report shows that Florida is the number one state for vehicular staged accident fraud . This is where multiple automobiles working in tandem force someone to hit them. All of those in the car will claim Twenty thousands dollars worth of injuries and just one incident can net the criminals between 80 and 100 thousand dollars . It appears that these crooks are great actors to pull this off day after day . I’m surprised that Florida has better actors than California, because they are only number three on this list .
Some really good news this week is that insurance companies are hiring or planning to hire this year . A poll found that 74 percent of top insurance carriers plan to hire this year . This news comes after the April Job Report which showed that a couple hundred thousand jobs were added last month. That’s the largest growth in four years. The report also reveals that Economic Confidence is much higher and people who have been out of work for a long time and had stopped looking for work are now beginning to look for work again .
Florida has long been a high-risk property insurance market because of Hurricanes . The industry was hit hard in 2005 , and it has since had to raise its premiums to protect against another bad year . But the Industry claims that it is losing money every year on these policies even with the absence of a single Florida hurricane . How do you lose seven hundred million dollars when not one claim was paid out ? Imagine a casino never losing a hand but saying they lost money . I’m sure there are a million complexities here, but it doesn’t pass the common-sense test .
It just goes to show that Insurance and the State of Florida like to wrestle . It’s always an interesting match.
Rick Sabian
