La. leaders give update on home insurance solutions

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - As thousands of you still struggle to find insurance for your home, the $45 million Incentive Fund for insurance companies to take advantage of was created back in February during a particular session. Today, we’re learning during the regular session lawmakers were able to put an additional $10 million into the program.

Insurance Commissioner, Jim Donelon, says this gives his office more leverage.

“It will enable us to have a round 2 of offerings to the companies for grants to be distributed,” said Donelon.

The last time we sat down with the commissioner was a couple of weeks ago, and he told us at least 8 companies have started to participate. Today he says it’s unclear if more will come.

“Whether we’ll have more takers this time, the same amount as we had for round 1, I’m not sure. Uh, we’ll know in July next month,” Donelon added.

Aside from the Incentive Fund, we’ve been told by almost everyone the Fortified Roof Program is the best long-term solution. It allows you to receive grant money from the state to fortify your roof, in other words, make it weatherproof. That program was created last year, but this year it was finally funded with $30 million.

However, Sen. Kirk Talbot (R) says it wasn’t all a big victory lap. He says one of the most crucial components of the insurance solution was voted down. Adding it was a bill to identify undisputed parts of a claim allowing payments to be made quicker, as well as define what bad faith is in a company.

“All those things lead us to more litigation. And that is not good for the policyholder and is one of the reasons why insurance companies don’t want to come here anymore and they’re pulling out. It was a frustrating thing and that was the bill I think that could have moved the needle more than anything. And unfortunately, we’re right back where we were,” said Sen. Talbot.

Wednesday at Rotary, Governor John Bel Edwards had these remarks on the bills that made it to his desk.

“Well, I thought we could have done more. And it’s my expectation that I will sign all of them but I’m not making a commitment at the moment because literally when I leave here, I’m going back, since about last Thursday morning. I mean hundreds of bills have been delivered and so we’re going through all of those,” said the governor.

Commissioner Donelon wants to remind you to shop at least once a month for a new insurance policy that you can afford since more options are becoming available.

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