Hope no one’s counting on FEMA, either:
With the 2006 hurricane season starting in just five weeks, many home insurers from Texas to Florida to New York are canceling policies along the coast or refusing to sell new ones out of fear of another catastrophic storm.
In the widest insurance retreat from coastal property since Hurricane Andrew slammed Florida in 1992, insurers as far north as Long Island, N.Y., and Cape Cod, Mass., are shedding coastal homeowners policies to reduce their exposure.
The companies that provide Americans with their homeowners and auto insurance made a record $44.8-billion profit last year even after accounting for the claims of policyholders wiped out by Hurricane Katrina and the other big storms of 2005, according to the firms’ filings with state regulators.
Top executives described the profit — an 18.7% increase over the previous year — as a fluke, the product of gains in other lines of insurance besides homeowners and a very good year for their investments.
Can you say “greed,” boys and girls? I knew you could.
