By LOUIS HAU, Times Staff Writer
Published November 15, 2005
TAMPA - Any long-term solution to Florida's property insurance woes must include more aggressive measures to prevent or minimize property damage in the first place, a consumer advocate told a state task force meeting Monday.
New technologies and building materials make it easier to build sturdier, storm-resistant structures and to reinforce existing structures against storm and wind damage, said Birny Birnbaum, executive director of the Center for Economic Justice in Austin, Texas.
The federal government should steer more funds toward defraying the costs of retrofitting structures, while insurers should encourage their customers to take such measures by offering to finance the purchase of storm-resistant equipment, Birnbaum said.
Birnbaum was one of several experts asked to appear during a daylong task force meeting at the University of South Florida. The panel, chaired by state insurance commissioner Kevin McCarty, is charged with finding long-term improvements to Florida's hurricane insurance market.
Florida insurance consumer advocate Steve Burgess said after the hearing that he too opposed deregulation, arguing that consumers believe state regulation "provides them with the assurance that the insurance market is reasonably priced. If it was a completely unfettered market situation, you're on your own to find out."
Some task force members, including Robert Hartwig, senior vice president and chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute in New York, said it would be useful to have a standardized system to rate the relative storm-resistance of homes on the market.
As consumers learn to distinguish between protected and unprotected homes, the values of homes built on the cheap would decline and could make it easier for purchasers to retrofit them with storm-resistant equipment, Hartwig said after the hearing.
