LAKE COUNTY >> Insurance companies District 3 Supervisor Jim Steele has been in contact with reportedly agreed to work with him to develop a way for residents to receive and keep fire coverage on properties.
Following the devastating fire seasons since 2015 in Northern California, insurance companies had been reducing coverage or even cutting policies entirely for residents living in areas considered high risk. This made it impossible for some homeowners to receive coverage.
Now Vale Insurance Partners is working with Steele on a plan to ensure fire coverage is available, increase the enrollment of homeowners and encourage fire prevention habits.
“In terms with you all we are happy to work with you and I’m not too concerned about aggregation in this area,” said Andrea Ferrari, Vale’s vice president.
Vale is a company that works in conjunction with highly-rated insurance carriers, services brokers and clients who need solutions to risk.
“We basically don’t decline anybody and we specialize in high risk qualifiers and so we don’t disqualify. You may go into the admitted market at a higher premium, but we don’t disqualify,” Ferrari said.
She added that the company hires people who worked for CalFire to inspect homes to ensure that they have taken approved fire prevention measures, often referred to as “hardening” a home.
“I work for the carrier and we manage their products. When they don’t want anything to do with it they let us do it. From start to finish and what we did was we put together a model that said you can write this and you can write it smartly. It can be done and it can be done well and be profitable on top of all that,” Ferrari said.
Ferrari advised that the California Department of Insurance is not going to stop companies from adjusting plans or avoiding high risk areas in the wake of the fires.
To help get the county back on the map for insurance coverage, she said she is willing to help and lower the current fire risk.
Steele said during the Valley Fire there were a lot of homeowners who didn’t have fire insurance and it created a problem for the county and the state. To help with this process and fund it county council is working on creating an ordinance to help create funds and get the project underway.
“If we can remove the impediments and bring these folks in and their kinds of ideas to make them part of the solution I think we can move faster than anyone that catches on,” Steele said. “What we want to do is to try and pull this ordinance together and as homeowners to pay $100 a year to fund the program.”
Steele said he will be working on creating a technical meeting with the company and work with them to get more details on what partnering will look like to help prevent fire and also get people insured who need it.
