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Insurers quiet on discounts
Bills require notice on savings from improvements
TALLAHASSEE — You may already be a winner. You can certainly make yourself one.
The Florida Legislature wants to make insurance companies let you know that you may already be eligible for hundreds of dollars in savings on wind coverage for your home.
More and bigger nails here, double straps on roof trusses there, shutters over your windows and doors — pretty soon you could be saving a lot of money on your wind insurance.
Sharon Birkenfeld will certainly be asking her agent. She has a new roof on her Palm Bay home after Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne tore off big chunks of her old one. But she's never heard about discounts to her wind coverage that the new construction could entitle her to.
"Those insurance companies, their allegiances are to shareholders and not to those they cover," Birkenfeld said.
That Birkenfeld doesn't know about the discounts is not surprising.
"The discounts are being provided, (insurance companies) just aren't giving the information on how to get them," said Bill York, Orlando-based director of building evaluations for Applied Research Associates Inc.
The national engineering firm has done about 15,000 home inspections in Florida to get homeowners certified for insurance discounts.
As part of sweeping hurricane insurance legislation now working its way through the House and Senate, insurance companies would be required to disclose discounts — up to 43 percent off for a fully protected home — for making homes more resistant to hurricane winds.
Insurance companies don't have to tell you about them, and few consumers take full advantage. A study by Applied Research Associates Inc. figured less than one half of 1 percent of Florida homeowners are getting all the discounts they have coming to them.
York conceded the bill could mean more work for his firm, but said he makes clear to customers that there are other ways to certify the improvements with engineers or architects.
The disclosure requirements remain in the bills voted out of their first committees, but insurance agents are wary.
"We believe that there may be a better way to achieve what you're after, without some of the drawbacks. We believe the burden (to agents) would be quite onerous," said Scott Johnson, a lobbyist for the Florida Association of Insurance Agents, to a House committee.
"We're concerned that approaching it this way would only restrict the offering of numerous quotes."
Instead of requiring policy-specific information, industry lobbyists suggested more generic notices and Web pages that could inform consumers.
Dealing with claims from the two storms, contractors and federal loan programs have made Birkenfeld more aggressive. She said she'd inquire about discounts, especially after she has hurricane shutters installed later this month.
"These hurricanes, it was very much a teachable moment for us all. These challenges lead to enlightenment."