Senate President Ben Albritton announced early on that there would be no substantive property insurance legislation passed this session. While we had hoped that Sen. Rodriguez’s and Rep. Mooney’s would make progress unfortunately they died in committee.
Senate Bill 1028 was the only substantive Citizens policy that passed this session. We reported previously on this bill and Insurance Commissioner Yaworsky’s desire to see more consumer protections in it.
The bill as passed expands the Citizens clearinghouse process to commercial lines coverage and restricts Citizens coverage eligibility if certain comparable coverage is offered by authorized or surplus lines insurers.
OIR was successful in pushing several amendments to the bill, including requirements for OIR approval of participating surplus lines insurers, oversight of the selected clearinghouse administrator, ensuring that admitted insurers always participate first, and lowering the keep out threshold from 20% to 15%.
Concerns remain about the need for this program (3,000 or so commercial policies), allowing surplus lines insurers to participate in the clearinghouse and allowing the clearinghouse administrator to also serve as the broker between the producing agent of record and the participating surplus lines insurer.