Mississippi Insurance Board To Visit
Members of the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association will be in Bermuda this month after visiting London first to seek out low reinsurance rates to try and keep down policyholder premiums in that hurricane-prone Gulf Coast state.
Board members travel to Bermuda and the UK annually to foster ties with major re/insurance players and answer questions about Mississippi building codes, the economy and general progress since Hurricane Katrina devastated the state.
Mississippi accounted for one-third of the $41 billion in insured losses caused by Katrina in 2005 [devastation to the community of Long Beach is pictured]. Katrina left 238 people dead, 67 missing, and billions of dollars in damage in Mississippi: bridges, barges, boats, piers, houses and cars were washed inland. The massive hurricane travelled up the entire state, and afterwards, all 82 counties in Mississippi were declared disaster areas.
The Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association insures coastal residents unable to obtain coverage in the open insurance market. The association currently insures about 46,000 coastal residences with about $7.1 billion in coverage.
In 2010, the Mississippi board purchased $750 million in reinsurance for about $69 million and expects to purchase about the same this year.
“We met with 25 different underwriting syndicates, all affiliated with Lloyd’s of London,” one board member told a Mississippi news agency today [Feb. 10] of the London trip. “Based on all of our conversations, I anticipate this time that we should be in a better position than the previous two times.”
In Bermuda board members hope to “update our relationships by giving our view of the current status of the things going on in Mississippi and in particular the six coastal counties, which comprise the coverage area of the wind pool …”
“[Bermuda reinsurers will then give] their views on the current status of the global reinsurance market and how that applies to us,” said the board member.
