Florida’s Citizens, Regulators Agree to Restrict Eligibility for New HO-8 Policies

January 4, 2013Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

Florida’s state-backed property insurer and state regulators have cleared the path for the insurer to begin issuing a new HO-8 policy by limiting it to low-value older homes, addressing concerns that the policies low rates could lead to a potential influx of policies into the insurer.

Citizens Property Insurance Corp. was required by law to start making the HO-8 policy available by January. As initially envisioned, the policy was intended to make Citizens less competitive with the private market by offering a more austere policy, although at a significant lower price.

An HO-8 policy typically provides less coverage than the popular HO-3 policy and pays actual cash value as opposed to replacement cost for damages. However, the HO-8 policy for Citizens became bogged down in controversy when the insurer and regulators could not agree on coverage details, underwriting criteria and rates.

Topping the list of concerns was that the policy would be offered to consumers who qualified for a standard HO-3 all-peril policy at rates roughly 20 percent cheaper, even though regulators required Citizens to offer full replacement coverage to make the policy acceptable to mortgage lenders.

Citizens Board Member Greg Rokeh said at a meeting in December that the policy would prove a draw, not a disincentive for consumers to choose Citizens.

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Rental Firms Agree Not to Rent Recalled Cars

September 28, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticle3 CommentsLeading U.S. car rental companies have agreed to back Senate legislation to pull vehicles from the road when recalled for safety defects, lawmakers and the firms said on Thursday.

The legislation brings car rental companies in line with auto dealers, who are barred from selling a car being recalled for a defect until the fault is repaired.

“Today we are closing this loophole in the law once and for all,” Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and one of the measure’s sponsors, said in a conference call.

The accord was agreed by Hertz, Avis Budget Group Inc., Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc. and Enterprise Holdings’ National and Enterprise units.

Those companies make up more than 93 percent of the rental car market. The bill is also supported by the American Car Rental Association, the Truck Renting and Leasing Association and AAA.

The measure stems from a 2004 accident in which two California women, Raechel and Jacqueline Houck, were killed in a head-on collision with a truck.

They lost control of their Enterprise rental car when a hose rubbed against the catalytic converter and leaked steering fluid, their mother, Cally Houck, said on the call. The model, a Chrysler PT Cruiser, had been recalled for the hose defect.

Houck lobbied for the bill, which is named for the two women. Schumer said he hoped for Senate approval in the lame-duck session following the November general election.

The measure – the Raechel and Jacqueline Houck Safe Rental Car Act of 2012 – would bar the rental or sale of vehicles subject to a safety recall, require rental companies to ground vehicles under a recall and let rental companies rely on temporary repairs identified by manufacturers.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also can investigate and police rental companies’ recall safety practices.

 

Copyright 2012 Reuters. Click for restrictions.Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetCategories: National NewsTopics: aut safety defects, recalled rental carsHave a hot lead? Email us at newsdesk

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180 Countries Agree on New Climate Treaty Agenda

May 25, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticle2 Comments

More than 180 countries agreed on an agenda for work on a new climate treaty by 2015 at United Nations climate talks on Friday, breaking a week-long deadlock over procedure.

“(The work plan) was not an easy issue to agree (on),” U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres told reporters after the negotiations held at Bonn in Germany.

“All parties needed reassurances from each other to allow them to undertake the work with a certain sense of comfort.”

U.N. climate talks in South Africa last year agreed a package of measures that would extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol after it expires at the end of this year and decide a new, legally binding accord to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 2015, coming into force by 2020.

In the Bonn talks, the first negotiation session since that deal was struck, delegates have argued for over a week on how to organize work on a new climate deal and appoint a chair to steer the process.

Procedural wrangling during the two-week session showed that deep disagreements remained among participants and put a lot of pressure on talks in Doha, Qatar, at the end of the year to deliver, observers said.

“When people start fighting about agendas it is a symptom of lack of trust and of some pretty substantive areas of disagreement,” said Celine Charveriat, director of advocacy and campaigns at international development charity Oxfam.

Countries will still need to work more on some critical issues, including the length of an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which nations will sign up to it and the level of emissions cuts that they will pledge.

They also need to identify ways to raise $100 billion a year of finance by 2020 to help developing countries tackle climate change.

Green groups and nations most vulnerable to the effects of global warming warn time is running out to avert disastrous consequences like increased extreme weather, ocean acidification and melting glaciers.

Countries have agreed that deep emissions cuts are needed to limit a rise in global average temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius this century above pre-industrial levels, a threshold that scientists say is the minimum required to avert catastrophic effects.

However, one of the main contributors to climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions, hit a record high last year, according to the International Energy Agency, which advises industrialized countries.

Some countries also look set to miss their emissions cut targets for 2020, putting the world on a dangerous trajectory towards a rise in global average temperature of 3.5 degree Celsius, research showed on Thursday.

“The majority of countries want to move forwards faster but..a relatively small group is holding up what the rest of the room wants,” said the European Union’s chief negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger.

(Editing by Anthony Barker)

 

 

 

 

 

Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetCategories: International NewsTopics: Climate Change, climate treaty, United NationsHave a hot lead? Email us at newsdesk

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