Several months ago, I mentioned HR 1056/SB 929, which is the federal Non-Admitted and Reinsurance Reform Act of 2007 (NRRA) that is intended to “streamline the regulation of non-admitted insurance and reinsurance.” In other words, the surplus lines and reinsurance markets.

Since a key focus of this bill is multi-state exposures, most would assume that the groups favoring it would consist of carriers and brokers that operate and are licensed nationally, or at least regionally. Local agencies, I assume, would perceive their general interests as being different from regional or national operations. However, it would be mistaken to ignore this pending federal piece of legislation because it is likely to become a law and would also affect local agencies' operations and business.

There are plenty of news articles and studies indicating that some residents are thinking about moving away from Florida, and along with them some business owners who are either partially or totally moving their operations north of the state line. This is due to, among other things, property taxes, but most especially the cost of hurricane insurance. This could have an impact on local agencies because businesses with multiple location operations that include Florida could be considered even bigger targets for non-Florida agents than they are now (if that's possible). And of course the Internet makes it much easier now for anyone to solicit and write business anywhere. All of those issues come into play with NRRA.