Ask Tim; Industry News

A portrait of the author's offi​ce​ mateAs we reported here last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Oct. 30 signed into law a bill that prohibits insurers from declining, cancelling, non-renewing, or increasing the premiums for homeowners coverage based solely on the fact that a dog of a particular breed lives in the home.  The new law applies to policies issued, renewed or modified on and after January 28, 2022. A few of you have emailed the research department with questions about it. It's important to know that the dog breed part is not the complete story.The law created a new Section 3421 of…

​Photo by jim gade on Unsplash​As reported in today's issue of The New York Times​, the way the National Flood Insurance Program sets premiums for coverage is going to change for the first time in 50 years next Friday. For some current and prospective property owners, the change may be painful. The methodology change takes effect for new policies on Oct. 1, 2021, with renewals following on April 1, 2022.The traditional way of pricing flood insurance has been to use a flood insurance rate map (FIRM) to determine the flood risk zone in which a property sits. For those properties in special flood hazard areas (SFHA),…

​<a title="Tommy Gao, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HurricaneIdaNYC2021.jpg"> As we're sure you know, horrible flooding hit the New York City metro area yesterday as the remnants of Hurricane Ida arrived, dumping a shocking amount of rain, stranding commuters, and costing lives. The loss of life is tragic and immeasurable, and the disruption to the lives of survivors is immense. And property was damaged. The Big I NY and Big I CT research departments have received questions from members about how personal and commercial property insurance may apply. Unfortunately, the news isn't good.Many commercial property insurance policies contain exclusions similar to this one from the ISO…