Florida officials cannot come to an agreement on the issue of homeowners insurance. Rates and claims are constantly up for debate. Governor Charlie Crist wants lower rates for homeowner’s insurance and signed a bill to that effect. The Florida House, though not disputing the new bill directly, wants an amendment that allows insurance providers the luxury of time when it comes to making good on homeowners’ claims.

House Bill 7077 requires insurance providers to pay claims or deny them within three months. However, as a provision, claims made by condominium associations and businesses are not included in this rule. The length of time for their claims to be repaid is not specified.

The exemption rule does not apply to residents of condominiums who purchase insurance on their own but to the condominium associations who purchase insurance for the grounds and common areas. Single-family homeowners and condo residents can expect to hear about their insurance claims one way or the other within 90 days as per the House bill.

Similar legislation is being considered in Florida’s Senate. William Stander, assistant vice president and regional manager of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, an industry trade group, justifies the provision by saying, “Adjusting and paying on a commercial claim is vastly more complex” than a single-family residence.

There are a number of ways in which to evaluate the financial strength, performance, and integrity of a life insurance company.

Their are third party services, which measure insurance companies’ financial strength, claims paying ability, and other financial categories. These include:

• Standard & Poor’s
• Moody’s
• Fitch
• Weiss

All of the above services assign “letter grades” to the various insurance companies. These letter grade ratings are not warranties of an insurer’s current or future ability to meet its contractual obligation, but rather opinions based on the available facts about each life insurance company. A++ and A+ usually mean theat the term life insurance company’s financial strength, performance and integrity is superior.

DataCover Insurance is a data recovery product developed by the DRI Group. Mr. Sandy Dunn is the director and lead shareholder of that group, a UK company founded in 2006.

Sandy Dunn says, “The DRI Group has designed a range of insurance products for both the commercial and personal markets that truly reflect today’s reliance on data. The first product to market is DataCover for desktop and laptop users, which marks a new level of electronic data protection for the customer, backed by an insurance policy, underwritten by Axa.

“The product provides a totally secure online data backup and restoration system, with the insurance policy to provide technical support and indemnity. Protected by global patents, not only is DataCover unique, it offers significant opportunities for the commercial and personal insurance sectors to secure new clients and retain existing business through genuine product innovation and added value. DataCover for mobile phones, business servers and an SME disaster recovery solution will all be available shortly.”

AXA’s markets managing director, Mark Cliff, adds: “The DRI Group is taking the lead in the provision of new-world risk solutions. DataCover Insurance gives businesses and individual’s peace of mind by providing a fully automated online software suite that encrypts and securely saves data, ready for immediate recovery following any digital disaster.”

Single-premium life (SPL) is a type of life insurance in which a lump sum of money is paid into the policy in return for a death benefit that is guaranteed to remain paid-up until you die.

With single-premium life insurance, the cash invested builds up quickly because the policy is fully funded. The size of the death benefit depends on the amount invested and the age and health of the insured. From the insurance company’s perspective, a younger person is calculated to have a longer remaining life expectancy, giving the funds paid in the premium more time to grow before the death benefit is expected to be paid out. And, naturally, the larger the amount of capital you initially contribute to your policy, the greater your death benefit will be as well. For example, a 60-year-old female might use a $25,000 single premium to provide a $50,000 income-tax free death benefit to her beneficiaries; whereas a 50-year-old male’s $100,000 single premium might give a $400,000 death benefit.

Hawaiian legislators may soon provide the state insurance commissioner with the power to approve health insurance rates, a move that would be a reinstatement of a previous regulation.

Hawaii’s Senate passed Senate Bill 12 unanimously and will now go before the House. Should it pass as expected, the bill will then be handed over to Governor Linda Lingle for approval.

Last year, Hawaii joined three other states that also have no regulations regarding oversight when it did not reinstate the regulation. It appears that the regulation is a shoe in for reinstatement.

Insurance providers, of course, don’t believe that oversight is necessary due to the tremendous growth in Hawaii’s insurance industry. Businesses, however, don’t agree. They are concerned that their employee insurance rates may skyrocket without the attention of an objective party.

Hawaii’s State Insurance Commissioner J.P. Schmidt will have the power to deny rates that are excessive, inadequate or discriminatory.

California State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner ordered the California Insurance Fund be audited after the Insurance Fund’s board of directors and the state attorney general requested the same thing. The reason for this seeming redundancy according to a spokesperson for Poizner said the commissioner wanted “to ensure there is an independent investigation” believing that “an internal investigation by an organization that has been plagued by corporate governance issues is not sufficient.”

The California Insurance Fund is run by a mostly governor-appointed board yet operates as a private company. More than 230,000 California businesses count on them for workers’ compensation insurance.

Two directors, Frank DelRe and Kent Dagg, resigned in November of 2006 after their $25 million administrative fee-payment in 2005 and the possibility of a conflict of interest became a subject of hot debate.

Chief officials from the State Compensation Insurance Fund and the two former directors all acknowledge the concern about the possibility of a conflict of interest but deny any implication of wrongdoing.

Dagg had this to say: “State Fund has a tendency to be a target, and being a target like that all the time weighs on the employees. I could see there was a perception that there could be a conflict of interest, and I could see this thing was going to get heated up, so I drew away from it.”

Often times, people tend to think that no load or low load life insurance policies are cheaper because they carry fewer expenses, which if you think about it, should transfer into lower premiums. But do they?

The answer is not all the time. The only difference between a low load policy and a regular policy you’d find at AccuQuote is the way the agent is compensate. Agents that sell low load policies are often referred to as fee-only. Which means you pay these people to help you find a low load policy. Whereas traditional agents aren’t paid by you, but rather the life insurance company.

Before commiting to any type of policy, be sure to shop around. Often time, you WILL be able to find a lower rate than what’s available in no load and low load policies.

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Here are a few terms may apply to you insurance contract:

Doctrine of Adhesion – This basically means that, once signed, you agree to all the terms in your insurance contract, that you won’t argue with any of the details later on.

Doctrine of Utmost Good Faith – This is what all insurance contracts are based on, the idea that because you are hiding nothing about your past that may affect the terms of the contract, the insurance provider is hiding nothing from you about the contract itself.

Principle of Subrogation – This means that the insurance provider can sue a third party if that party causes you a loss that is covered under the insurance contract. If your property is stolen, then you will be reimbursed by your insurance provider according to your policy but the insurance company may sue the thief in an effort to get some of that money back.

Insurable Interest – This means that you are legally within your rights to insure anything you own and protect yourself through insurance against any litigation or financial loss that may befall you.

Conversely, it also means that you don’t have the right to insure something that you don’t own. That is, you have no legal right to apply for a financial reimbursement when a property is damaged that does not belong to you. For example, your mother’s car may one day belong to you but until it does, you can not take out insurance on it or file a claim for reimbursement should it be damaged or stolen.

In a recent MSN article, Liz Pulliam Weston says it best:

“Beware of the temptation to lie on your life insurance application to get a better rate. If your deception is discovered, your heirs could pay the price.

If you’re a weekly cigar smoker, for example, abstaining for a few weeks prior to your medical exam might eliminate the nicotine marker from your urine, said Bob Barney, president of Compulife Software, which provides the Term4Sale online insurance quote service.

But if you die and the insurer investigates your claim, a chatty neighbor might reveal your “secret” habit — and the insurer might refuse to pay.

There is a loophole for U.S. residents. If you don’t die within the first two years of getting a policy and the insurer doesn’t otherwise discover your “misstatement” during that period, the company has to pay the benefit unless your deception rose to the level of fraud (such as if you pretended you were an entirely different person). So if you’ve already fudged an insurance application and you’re beyond the two-year mark, you might want to hang on to your current policy rather than refinance.”