PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) – People in Florida have already been paying more for coverage before these two storms hit weeks apart.
“We don’t need anything else to push up premiums,” said Trey Hutt, at Hutt Insurance Agency. “We’re already paying double the national average. The average premiums are already over $10,000 for those bigger towns.”
Trey Hutt at Hutt Insurance Agency says premiums have tripled over the last four years.
“I think the good news is that premiums are beginning to stabilize actually,” said Hutt. “This storm was probably about a 30 or $35 billion event and that’s something that insurance companies can plan for and shouldn’t impact premiums going.”
Fortunately, our area didn’t receive damage from the hurricanes hitting the state.
“The only claims we’ve seen are from clients on southwest Florida’s coast,” said Hutt. “Those have even been modest. An awful lot of flooding obviously happened down there, but there is nothing up here.”
We are told people in South Florida could expect an increase in rates.
“I think it remains to be seen what’s going to happen in southwest Florida because they have had two hits in fairly short order and Ian was not too long ago and that was a really big storm that was north of $100 billion,” said Hutt. “The folks on the southwest Florida coast may see some increases where we probably won’t.”
Hutt says those in Bay County should not worry about their rates rising.
“People have a concern because rates are set and approved on a statewide basis,” said Hutt. “again, just because we had a storm somewhere else doesn’t mean it’s going to make our rates go up here.”
He suggests having home insurance and being sure it covers a windstorm and flooding.
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