Let’s start off in Florida where State Farm has just sent out notices to 15% of the 810,000 people holding home insurance that their policies will not be renewed. For the record, the insurer has to give six months’ notice of its intention to refuse renewal. This is supposed to give adequate time for all homeowners to make alternative arrangements. This move to drop some 125,000 policies is quite significant so what’s going on? The answer is unfortunate and going to become a problem around the country. Every state has a Department or Office of Insurance that’s responsible for licensing and regulating the selling of insurance. One of the standard conditions in every one of the fifty US states is that each licensed insurer should have adequate capital reserves to pay out on all claims as and when they fall due.
Before the recession, this was not amy kind of problem. All the insurers had their reserves invested in stocks and bonds. While the DJIA and other exchanges continued on an upward trend, the world sat back and assumed nothing could go wrong. This overconfidence meant that insurers were slow to pull their money out of the markets when the recession started to hit. As a result, almost all the insurers lost a big slice of their capital worth. In early 2009, State Farms in Florida realized it was likely to be insolvent in about two years if the projected number of claims were made. It approached the local Office of Insurance and did a deal. It would reduce the number of homeowners insured and increase the premiums for the remaining policyholders. This would reduce its exposure to claims and increase its capital reserves. Even with this plan, A M Best reduced the rating of State Farm to “fair” based on the expected continuing deterioration in its earning capacity.
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