With another hurricane season looming, Louisiana is entering Year 3 of a full-blown insurance crisis, and newly-elected Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple addressed the issue while speaking with the Press Club.
“The crisis we’re in is unlike nothing that anyone that’s lived in the state has seen before,” Temple said, according to BRProud. “We need to have it. We just need to make sure that it’s more available and more affordable.”
Temple traced the root of the problem to the 2020 hurricane season when Louisiana was impacted by four separate hurricanes.
“800,000 claims, property claims that the industry had never experienced anything on that level. Twelve companies went insolvent,” Temple said. “Twelve companies that took your premium dollars and promised you to pay and didn’t because they either didn’t have the right business plan, they didn’t have the right financial reserves, they didn’t have the right reinsurance purchased.”
The new commissioner said he hopes to bring more insurance companies to the state that can be trusted to serve the needs of their customers should disaster strike again.
“I want you doing business in the state of Louisiana. I want to work with you so that you can do business in the state of Louisiana because I want your competition benefiting the consumers and the state of Louisiana,” Temple said.
Legislatively, Temple wants to increase grant funding to the fortified program.
“We’re going to also ask that they increase that to $10,000 here in Louisiana so that we can encourage and promote stronger roofs because, like I said, we’ve got so many properties exposed to hurricane winds,” he said.
In summation, Temple said his goal as insurance commissioner is simple.
“You know, my incentive is to be a state that insurance companies want to come in because we’re steady, reliable, predictable, and you’re treated fairly,” he said.
