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Talk of the bay: Financial whiz James says insurance rates don't cover risk

By Times Staff
Published March 6, 2008

Tom James has a message that won't win him fans among Florida homeowners: Insurance rates need to go up - and soon. The venerable CEO at Raymond James Financial told a crowd at the University of Tampa's Fellows Forum on Wednesday that insurance companies couldn't cover losses from a major hurricane, as much as $190-billion for a hit to southeast Florida. Rates need to jump 35 percent, he said. "We are benefiting from rates that don't reflect hurricane risks to the coasts here,"James said. "We're kidding ourselves and I fault the politicians who fault the insurance business. We've chased out every major insurance company in Florida. This is very precarious."

Mobile home rates get public forum

This should be like holding a prayer meeting at an atheists convention: At 1:30 p.m. today at City Hall in Lakeland, Florida regulators will hold a public hearing on Foremost Insurance Group's proposed 73 percent rate hike for mobile home owners. Michigan-based Foremost insures about 100,000 mobile homes in Florida, or about a third of the market. Polk County, with 20,000 Foremost policyholders, has the highest concentration of those customers, with 3,000 in Pasco and Hillsborough counties. Regulators initially rejected Foremost's rate hike because it wasn't certified, but the company refiled. The good news for policyholders is that for now, Foremost must use the last approved rate, an average 20 percent reduction. For information, go to www.floir.com and click on upcoming events and public rate hearings, or call (850) 413-3140.

Ethanol plant plan back in pipeline

An ethanol plant planned for the Port of Tampa, mired in a lawsuit for more than a year, appears clear for takeoff. Bradley Krohn, president of US EnviroFuels, declined to confirm the suit has been settled. But he did say the project was now seeking financing, and expected to get under way in the second half of 2008, signaling a resolution in the project's legal woes. Krohn also said the project has changed. Original plans called for a 44-million-gallon-a-year plant that would use corn from the Midwest and reclaimed water from Tampa to make ethanol, an alcohol fuel. Instead, Krohn will start with an ethanol storage and blending facility. US EnviroFuels is moving forward with an ethanol plant in Highlands County.

[Last modified March 5, 2008, 23:13:56]