Residents must fight lax insurance standard

Seems the old proverb about the “chickens coming home to roost” has sure come home to bite Floridians in the backside. Two Florida insurers are under scrutiny. One, Guarantee Insurance Co., for alleged financial fraud that lined the pockets of the CEO. And the other, People’s Trust, a “one-hit wonder” spawned by the shedding of thousands of homeowner policies and tens of millions of dollars by Citizens Insurance.

People’s Trust, formed when Citizens jettisoned thousands of policyholders in the past 10 years, is now suing its own customers who chose not to use PT’s own in-house repair service to fix damage repair claims. Can you blame any homeowner for not trusting the company paying for the repairs to ensure their captive repair company is doing things correctly and not just cheaply?

And Guarantee Insurance, a workers’ compensation insurance company, has been placed in receivership by the state for first misstating its results favorably and then restating them negatively to fall well below capitalization requirements. While much of the money allegedly went to the pockets of the CEO.

When will Floridians rebel over the lax attitude of Rick Scott and the so-called insurance regulators to do their job? They need to regulate the industry up front, not just come after them well after the fact and try to enforce lax standards. Harvey Starin, Delray Beach