Contractor: Insurers driving up costs

Florida’s Universal among companies

Restoration companies and trial attorneys aren’t the only ones to blame for the “assignment of benefits” crisis driving steep annual home insurance rate hikes in South Florida.

“Bad insurance companies” are culprits too, and one of them is Fort Lauderdale-based Universal Property & Casualty, the state’s largest property insurer.

That’s what the owner of a Pensacola-based restoration contractor told the state Senate Banking and Insurance Committee on Tuesday in the first meeting of yet another effort to build consensus for legislation aimed at curbing rising claims costs, lawsuits and legal fees.

The assertions by Dave DeBlander, owner of Pro Clean Restoration and Cleaning, counter what insurance companies and their supporters have been saying for at least five years about repair contractors and their attorneys.

Insurers paint repair contractors as “fraudsters” or “bad actors” who coerce policyholders into signing over their rights to bill insurers before commencing work. Insurers say contractors, particularly in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, routinely inflate their invoices then they can file suit when insurers deny or underpay their claims. Trial attorneys participate so they can collect legal fees when insurers inevitably settle, insurers say.

DeBlander said Universal is among “bad” companies that subject contractors to long delays before underpaying for completed work. He named the company at the urging of two senators on the committee after he described bad experiences with unidentified “bad” insurers.

DeBlander told the Senate committee that he was forced to sue an insurer, which he said in an interview after the meeting was not Universal, that for 10 months stalled on paying a $6,500 invoice. Finally the insurer told him, “We’re going to give you $3,800.”

“So I have a lawsuit right now,” DeBlander said at the meeting. “We’ll win.” And the insurer will end up paying $13,000, including legal fees, and use the case as an example of AOB lawsuits driving up costs, he said.

Without an assignment of benefits, DeBlander said, “I would have to sue the homeowner because I didn’t get paid my $6,500. “That’s why we have to use an AOB. It protects us and it protects the homeowner.”

Altmaier responded by voicing doubts about DeBlander’s account.