Chip Merlin | Property Insurance Coverage Law Blog
United Policyholders takes action and gets things done for policyholders regarding the insurance gap issue. United Policyholders is tackling the insurance gap coverage problem by providing staff and resources to collect rogue property insurance policy forms being issued by insurance companies, to show examples of how insurers are stepping over each other to silently gain a competitive advantage of lower price with cheap insurance.
One of the biggest complaints from policyholders, contractors, and public adjusters after a loss occurs is that newer policy language issued by many insurers is horrible and does not pay for the loss. United Policyholders is doing something about these concerns.
Insurance companies are filing language to change standard ISO policy language at an increasing rate. These filings are getting by insurance regulators for various reasons. But, these filings by insurers are at the top of the worst anti-policyholder trends—which is accelerating as I write this post. Insurance regulators need to do something now to stop the wrongful conduct.
Jesse Sipe is a co-founder of the Professional Public Adjusters Association of New Jersey (PPAANJ) and helped make the PPAANJ into the largest public adjuster organization in New Jersey or New York. Unlike some who exclude leaders of other groups, Jesse inclusively invited the legal counsel for the American Association of Public Insurance Adjusters, Holley Soffer, to discuss the insurance gap issue at PPAANJ’s fall meeting. Ms. Soffer did not disappoint.
Holley Soffer’s presentation highlighted the current crisis of policyholders being bamboozled into purchasing “cheap” insurance through language which is non-standard. She noted this is happening at a rate opposite of the slow-moving climate change issues, which make most news headlines. Insurance is not a front-page headline type of issue, despite all of us having to purchase the insurance product.
Soffer noted that Amy Bach and her staff at United Policyholders are collecting and reporting all policy changes to Rutgers University insurance law professor Jay Feinman and his staff at the Center for Risk and Responsibility.
Are you a contractor, policyholder, policyholder attorney, public adjuster, or regulator and want to do your part to help stop this practice? Take this simple step:
Copy the policy form and send it to this email address: Policies@uphelp.org
If it is really bad, send me a copy so I can blog about it!