Insurance Weather Modeling - Others Have Questions Too

Last week I posted a couple of different links to stories on the use of weather modeling in setting insurance rates. I shared some questions that are stuck in my mind on the reliability of the long range forecast. Given the magnitude of coastal insurance rate increases since Katrina struck, the issue of whether consumers of insurance are being treated fairly on price and the use of weather modeling to justify drastic price increases was addressed last week as well in the Boston Globe.

"HOME INSURANCE rates are skyrocketing on Cape Cod, the islands, and in other coastal areas. Driving the increases are concerns by insurers that a major hurricane could wreak the kind of devastation that hurricanes have brought to other parts of the country. Some companies have simply stopped insuring in shore areas, forcing homeowners into the state's FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort.

But Massachusetts need not simply accept this price spiral, because the state has options for making insurance more affordable. One is for state officials to take a closer look at the models of hurricane devastation that insurers use to justify their higher rates.

Companies hold these "black box" models closely, but a legislative commission recommended earlier this month that state officials seek access to them. The panel called for a new "independent public entity" to study the reliability of the models. Two members - state Senator Robert O'Leary of Barnstable and state Representative Eric Turkington of Falmouth - went further, calling for the state to create its own model or require that any private model be open to review by the attorney general. Such efforts make sense; rates for a product that homeowners have little choice but to buy ought to be based on defensible criteria."