Don’t let the beautiful Florida sunshine blind you to the storm brewing in the personal lines property market. 

At the recent Florida Insurance Market Summit (FIMS), the legal and governmental consulting firm Colodny Fass presented some sobering statistics regarding the magnitude of the Florida homeowners insurance market “storm” in 2022:

For this Advisory Report, AAIS sat down with Ryan Purdy, Director at Merlinos & Associates - a Davies Company, to discuss key takeaways from the recent Florida Chamber of Commerce Insurance Summit. He also touched on key trends to look for moving into 2023 as well as updates specifically seen across the Florida insurance market.

Personal lines insurance is more diverse than ever before. During a Personal Lines Product Council in 2022 hosted by AAIS, Member carriers and other key stakeholders discussed several key issues affecting the market, from cryptocurrency and solar panels to container homes, “swimply”, and e-bikes and scooters.

AAIS established Product Advisory Councils to bring Member carriers and other industry stakeholders together to identify the burgeoning issues concerning insurers and the broader insurance industry today. While not all issues raised can be solved through product or program developments, we believe discussing emerging issues as well as working together within the AAIS Community can spawn new ideas and usher resources to meet today’s challenges. A general overview of several emerging issues is discussed below.

Flood insurance has long been primarily administered by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which has 5.1 million policies in force. But the landscape for flood insurance – and who needs it – is changing. This was the topic of an AM Best webinar that included Linda Jancik, AAIS Personal Lines Product Manager, Serena Garrahan, Vice President, Inland Flood Product Manager at Munich Re US, and Rob Olson, Senior Research Analyst at International Risk Management Institute (IRMI).

During the height of the COVID pandemic, Berkley Re Solutions’ Jeff Cron joined AAIS for a an AAIS Pulse session looking at ‘Cyber Crime: The Online Home Invasion.’   "We’re all online more, seeing content, and clicking links to different articles, videos, and other forms of media. While the actual risk hasn’t changed, volume has magnified, with more scams and more screen time.”

Imagine this: You’re working from home, like many others during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your children are also home, remote learning. One of your kids falls prey to malware, infecting your entire network with a virus. Your at-home business’s website is shut down for eight hours. You sigh a breath of relief, thankful that your insurance will cover the costs… or does it?

With an increasing number of employees working from home, there has also been an alarming increase in personal and professional cybercrime exposure. At the September 2020 AAIS Pulse, AAIS Personal Lines Product Manager Linda Jancik hosted a panel of cyber-focused leaders, including CyberScout’s Eric Warbasse and Berkley Re Solutions’ Jeff Cron and Chris Ellis to discuss the rise of cyber threats, future predictions, and how carriers can protect their customers from emerging digital exposures.

It’s common to hear the phrase, ‘the world is getting more complex every day’…so much that it’s become cliché. That is, unless it’s your job to try to understand, quantify, and insure the perils that come from that complexity. We know you’re looking for actionable insights to protect your business. The problem is typically not the lack of information about these perils but rather, the information overload that makes it a challenge to to find timely, relevant, and reliable insights that you can use to make informed decisions. You rely on AAIS for advisory expertise on the products your customers use, and now we’re inviting you to try our new Risk Awareness Service, our latest tool to help our Members maintain your competitive advantage.  

As today’s families fall asleep at night, they rest assured that they are protected from home perils. When thinking about keeping our homes safe, many think of the standard home perils: fire, floods, and burglary. However, as we delve further into the age of technology, many people forget that their homes are susceptible to more than physical perils. Danger can lurk within their phones, computers, and other IoT devices.

Advancements in technology have brought great strength to home security systems, transforming what we once considered an average house into a modern smart home.