Well you do have the option of taking on all the risk and self insure yourself if you feel insurance companies are so crooked.

Ahhhh .... yur bringing up an option that the in the insurance biz DONT LIKE ...

Remember THIS HOUSE ?

Why would insurers care if you chose to self-insure? The # of individuals who qualify to self-insured AND choose to do so is tiny.

One of these days, you might actually think something through before you post it. I doubt it, though.

Oh my gooooness... a little TOUCHY THERE nutT ....

There’s LOTS OF BUILDING going on here .. especially out with GulfOmex waterfront.....

MOST are being overbuilt and SELF INSURED ...,

And YOU SAY the insurance companies DONT CARE ?!!

PANTS ON FIRE !

News flash...insurers aren't excited at all about insuring buildings in Florida. The ones that do so, do so for a combination of two reasons:

- because the state won't allow them to sell other insurance products without offering honeowners insurance as well
- the insurer doesn't want to lose the "I keep all of my stuff insured with the same company" customers

The state does allow them to charge a premium amount to reflect the risk inherent in insuring buildings in Florida, which creates a price that makes self-insuring more attractive AND avoids upsetting the "I keep all my stuff insured with the same company" crowd. Thus, the insurer keeps all of the more desirable business,and loses the business they don't want, and they do so while following the state department of insurance requirement that they offer homeowners insurance. So no, insurers don't care about a small segment of the market choosing to self-insure a risk that the insurance company would rather not have on their books.

Come on now ... you work in a business that gives CHEAP OUT and TIGHT WAD new meaning

And that’s fine ... but don’t make it out to be that you guys are SANTA CLAUS. !

What are you blabbering on about now? My answer has nothing to do with anything along those lines.

BLABBERING ?

How about some more ? .. just how much do insurance companies COLLECT ..,, then PAY OUT in claims ?

20% ?

The REST in consumed IN HOUSE ..... I suggest !

I answered that question before. I don't know what the goal is for other companies, but ours is to make $0.04 on every premium dollar earned, which means that our goal is to pay $0.96 of every dollar. If we make more, it allows us to reduce rates and get more new customers, and to retain existing customers for a longer period of time. This is one of the reasons State Farm has been bleeding market share for years. They suck at underwriting. They pay out far more than they earn in premiums.

Not sure why you continue to waste time responding to him?

He has shown he is unwilling and incapable of understanding.

Define ... premium dollar earned ....

And you are suggesting that the regular insurance company ONLY NETS 4% ?

And then PAYS OUT out of that 4 points all overhead ... salaries bonuses etc ?

Premium dollar earned = Your insurance costs $1,000 per year, as an example. That's the amount of your insurance premium. When you take out the policy, that $1,000 represents $1,000 premium dollars written, aka sold. However, premium dollars earned only represent the amount you've paid to that point. If you pay in full each year, as I do, the premium dollars written equal the premium dollars earned on day 1 of your policy period. If you don't, the premium dollars earned are whatever you've paid toward that $1,000, and the premium dollars earned amount increases with each payment you make toward your $1,000 total premium.

The net underwriting profit goal is 4%, at least where I work. If you are making more money off of the premiums than you intend to, it's an indicator that your prices are too high relative to the risks you have underwritten. In the short term, that might sound great, because who doesn't want more money, right? However, if you're making "too much" money consistently over the course of several months (NOT years, months), you're going to hurt your chances of getting new business, which is not good. Much worse, however, is you run the risk of chasing off your existing customers, and THAT is where you will go from making too much money to losing money very quickly.

The goal is to price properly so that you can keep your existing customers while earning new customers at the same time. That's what we've done for years, as has Geico. We're better at underwriting than any other major company. That's the reason we've taken so many customers from State Farm. It's also why SF will have gone from having 34% of the auto insurance market...at one time, though to be completely untouchable, as 2nd place at the time had about 18%...to being in 3rd place within the next few years. Us and Geico will both pass them. It's just a question of when. There's nothing SF can do to stop it. It's a horribly managed company that sucks at underwriting, is extremely adverse to change, has never had to aggressively earn new business until maybe 15 years ago, and is not held accountable because they are not publicly traded.

THX for the yadi yadi yada .... but WHAT are the bottom line numbers ... on the whole ?

What are your GROSS SALES numbers ?

I must have missed it, but who do you work for Not a Charger?

I honestly don't pay much attention to it, but we're one of the few Fortune 500 companies (maybe the only one? we used to be the only one, I think) that report financials monthly instead of quarterly. It's all public info. You're welcome to look it up.

I pay attention to growth rates, and I pay attention to the underwriting profit #'s, because those are the two things that determine how much my bonus will be (if any). Make a ton of $$ but no growth? Not much of a bonus. Grow like crazy while losing money? Not much of a bonus. Grow consistently and profitably? Pay for kids' college and not have to work until I'm 70 years old.

The #2 (or #3, depending on the day) auto insurer in the US.

Actually State Farms goal was always to have a small underwriting loss every year. They easily recovered that in investment income. Last year they lost almost million policies. Guess what they did don't care. Most of those were policies they didn't want. As to poor underwriting that is a two fold problem. A poorly written policy with over generous pay out for additional cost of living expenses, poorly written covered loss descriptions to name a few. Some of this was addressed in the last policy rewrite. Add in a claims force that is poorly trained and almost completely elimination of field underwriters. The place is sh!t show now. Retired in May of this yr w/28 yrs on the job because I couldn't stand to work there any longer. Some of the unethical stuff upper management is forcing on claims will eventually come back to haunt them. I uave my pension and nice 41k and enjoying Florida in the winter qnd Ohio in spring, summer and fall.

Just for S and G's when I started with the Farm in 1992 they were worth 4 billion. Today its over 100 billion.

Right. Was that way for many, many decades The problem with that is they no longer have 34% of the market. That model works when you're double the size of 2nd place. Not so much when the competition starts taking your customers, and you all of a sudden HAVE to be able to underwrite. They can't.