In a bit of happy news for homeowners, Citizen's Property Insurance Corp, the state-owned insurer of last resort, has agreed to start using more than one vendor to estimate a building's replacement cost, which determines how much insurance a property owner needs. As always, it is not good for consumers when a company, in this case 360Value, has a monopoly on a resource, such as estimates on replacement costs. It could easily be argued that 360Value had an incentive to provide excessively high estimates of replacement cost to Citizen's because that created more revenue for Citizen's through higher insurance premiums. The assurance of inflated premiums could have kept Citizen's willing to deal exclusively with 360Value.
Citizen's will now consider estimates from other vendors; an appraisal from someone licensed to estimate insurance replacement costs; a general contractor, architect or engineer; and a property inspection report that has been completed within the past 12 months.
Now let's all give three cheers for a free market economy and competition.
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