- 2025-08-11
- Posted by: kimsite
- Categories: Commentary, Insights, News
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IAN OLIVER: Fox Weather is your Hurricane HQ. Tropical Storm Aaron has formed west of Cabo Verde in the Eastern Atlantic. It’s on track to become the first hurricane of the 2025 Atlantic season — maybe the first major down the road. That potential is there. All of this is right on schedule as the peak of the hurricane season approaches. And if you’re not prepared yet, now is the time. That includes reviewing your home insurance before a storm threatens your area. And one key detail many people may overlook is the deadline to file a claim. A Florida woman filed her claim more than three years after Hurricane Irma, but it was denied for being too late. She took it to court, but both the circuit and appellate judges sided with the insurer. So what should you be checking in on your policy right now? What do you need to know about it? Let’s get some answers. We’re joined now by Scott Martin. He’s the Chief Investment Officer at Kingsview Partners. Scott, great to have you back with us. You just heard the one example — how does the timing of a named storm impact the homeowner’s ability to adjust their insurance? I’m curious, front end and back end here, how long you have to have a policy for it to count, more or less, and how much time you have after a storm strikes.
SCOTT MARTIN: Yeah, well, it depends on a lot of things, including your insurance company and what they’re going to underwrite and what the policy itself says. I mean, you mentioned it — you’ve got to know what you have and certainly know what you don’t have as a policyholder these days, because the insurance companies are really restricting a lot of coverage that they used to give or a lot of, say, concessions they used to make because the insurance company realizes that there’s a lot of risk on their end that they want to make sure they protect. So I’ll tell you this much — that woman that was taking them to court and then obviously got judged against — probably there’s a reasonable amount of time in a lot of these areas where you need to file a claim. And in most policies that I’ve seen, that we’ve had, it’s been within a year. Now, the problem with that is you need an assessor out there, you need damage reports, and things like that. In the case of Hurricane Ian — no relation to you yet, my friend — we had to wait months to get an assessment of stuff that was damaged on Captiva Island where we were at a place. So there’s a certain amount of time that needs to go by until you probably can get everything gathered, but anything over a year or so is typically an amount where an insurance company will contest the claim, or you’re going to have issues filing the claim because there’s other damage that could have occurred since that certain portion of the damage could be attributed to, say, a hurricane or a thing that you’re actually claiming for.
IAN OLIVER: Yeah, that’s a great point, Scott. A lot of folks are saying, “Sure, get me an assessor out here tomorrow.” But we know it doesn’t work like that. I just had an example of that — a buddy of mine down in Tampa had flooding from Helene and he was waiting to get an insurance assessor to his house. He gets hit by Milton and floods again, and then there’s all kinds of confusion in the claims process. Wanted to ask you about that — they gave him a little bit of grief as far as what damage was from each particular storm, his mindset being, “Why does it matter? I need to repair my home.” So how does that potentially complicate things?
SCOTT MARTIN: Yeah, so depending on the policy, Ian, you either have wind damage, you have flooding coverage, or you have storm surge coverage. And even on the wind damage, that’s not as simple — I mean, you have different kinds of wind damage and stuff that’s part of a deductible, and that part of it may not be. So that’s another thing too — you’ve got to see deductible rates that come into play, because there are only certain deductibles based on each storm or each event. So in the case of your buddy, maybe they couldn’t attribute what the damage was per storm, so therefore there might have been problems with the deductible he would have to pay. And then the flooding thing too is weird, because you think you have flood insurance, but you don’t have storm surge insurance. So then what happens is you get water all over your home or your basement or whatever, and that’s listed or documented as maybe storm surge, not flooding from heavy rain, and that doesn’t get covered in the policy. So there are a litany of things that went wrong, even for us with Hurricane Ian — and I know many others with Hurricane Milton and so forth — that the insurance companies are, I guess, one part of it. I understand they’re trying to cover their whats, but in other parts, a lot of folks don’t realize what they have and don’t have. And therefore your storm comes and you’re devastated as it is emotionally by losing things in your home, but then you find out on the backend that you don’t have the money to pay for it because the insurance company is leaving you high and dry.
IAN OLIVER: Right, it’s a horrible disaster that can follow a disaster, truly. And you had spoken to your personal experience, Scott — do the numbers show that with what’s gone on, just in recent memory in Florida with all of these impactful storms, I know some of the insurance problems have been alleviated — are more folks either trying to get coverage or up their coverage with what’s gone on lately?
SCOTT MARTIN: Some are, and some, I think, have seen the cost of that now and are saying, “Oh my gosh, I’d rather take the risk,” which I don’t recommend because, as we’ve seen over the last couple of years, I mean, you thought Hurricane Ian was bad, then we had a couple of other suitors to try to take the reins off of Ian as being one of the worst disasters. So, look, I think you have to get insurance, but the problem too, I think, Ian, is the fact you have a lot of these insurance companies assessing the risks in these areas — say, on the coast especially — as being too high. So you may not even be able to find the insurance that you thought you could get, let alone find the money to pay for it.
So you really want to go out and assess and really get a deep dive into what’s available, what’s out there, and what the value of the home is that you’re trying to insure, because there may be a value that you have assessed to something that is not worth it or not going to be comprehensively covered. So there are a lot of pieces that are moving to these parts nowadays that frankly were not the case, say, five or ten years ago. But you have to be stepping up and being reliant on some of your own research to find this out because the insurance companies aren’t running out and giving you insurance for cheap anymore, that’s for sure. And so everybody’s a player in this game and you’ve got to make sure you know how to play it.
IAN OLIVER: Scott, that’s a really good point. Everybody’s separate scenario is unique and there are a lot of things to consider, but the point is, make those decisions — even if they’re difficult decisions — make them now in advance of a hurricane so you can be prepared if we do see some impacts. That’s the Chief Investment Officer at Kingsview Partners, Scott Martin. Scott, always great to see you.
SCOTT MARTIN: Thank you. See you.
