“London Bridge is falling down…
How will we build it up…
Build it up with silver and gold,..
Gold and silver I have none,
I have none, I have none.”
“The Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association…insures about 46,000 coastal residences with about $7.1 billion in coverage.”
Talk about numbers that will blow you away – according to data from the Census Bureau, 46,000 residences is just slightly less than a third (29%) of the 158,984 housing units in the three coastal counties of the State. In Hancock County, hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina,when data were collected in 2009, there were only 15,563 housing units. Current information on the average value of a housing unit in Hancock County was not available; but, $92,500 was listed as the median in 2000.
The point? Using the data from Hancock County as the basis for a guesstimate, the number of covered residences and amount of coverage provided seem higher than one might expect from the State’s “insurer of last resort”.
Nonetheless, gulflive.com, reports, “members of the state wind pool board are headed to London this week to seek out low reinsurance rates that will help keep down policyholders’ premiums” – including the member who is Allstate’s Tennessee-based Regional Counsel! The fox-in-the-hen-house composition of the Board was maintained inHB1500, legislation that converted the Board from an “arm of government” into a private, non-profit entity – obviously without requiring transparency on a website more function than one designed for the Flintstones.
The purpose of the trip is to develop close relationships with the key market players and to answer specific questions about the Mississippi coast’s building codes, economy and progress since Hurricane Katrina, among other topics.
“When they’re investing that kind of money, they want to know that our building codes are up to standard, that we enforce them, that our development is not part of a haphazard plan, that there is accountability,” Cumbest said. “We have to tout the things we’re doing here.”
Other board members will do the same thing when they travel to Bermuda next month, he said, and it will be mid-March before the wind pool board receives its reinsurance quotes.
So, off the Board goes to “develop relationships” needed to convince “key market players” to take Mississippi’s money – and, where do they go but London where to Euro like London Bridge is falling down.
“Build it up with silver and gold,..
Gold and silver I have none,
I have none, I have none.”
The wind pool is state sanctioned collusion. Imagine if these were bankers and banks that refused to serve a market were allowed to control a pool that would lend to that market at much higher interest rates. It couldn’t happen because it would be an egregious antitrust violation. But in insurance it is standard operating procedure.