November 2023

WE HAVE BEEN HERE... from page 34.

repair/replacement activities, and inspection frequency. It also forced the insurance industry to take a hard look at our nation’s aging buildings, structures, and infrastructures and their ultimate insurability. This has become critical for all of us, but especially problematic for multi-story buildings and those in coastal areas with high salt content in the air (coastal properties). Several current factors have contributed to our current hard market continued presence including, low investment income, nuclear jury awards, global catastrophic events, residual effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, increased costs, construction and supply delays, and reinsurance availability. I am confident that at some point and time the hard market will cycle out as it has in the past as some of the factors above start to find their equilibrium. In addition, the community association industry’s increased focus on regular and more frequent safety inspections, maintaining properly funded reserve studies, tighter management controls, and exercising adequate maintenance/repair/replacement practices will all be major factors in improving our industry’s cumulative loss history and insurability. n

result in 2,996 deaths, but it was also clearly the most catastrophic day for multiple lines of insurance, including property, liability (including aviation), workers’ compensa tion, automobile, and life & health just to name a few. This created a huge capacity problem in the insurance industry that took until the end of 2004 to level off and finally have the insurance market normalize. This was thanks to underwriting and actuarial efforts made by the insurance companies. Insurance executives had been warning the insurance industry that another hard market was on the horizon for many years. This was largely fueled by the fact that the insur ance industry had only turned a cumulative profit in eight of the last thirty-five years. We started seeing this predicted hardening in 2019, but the hard market really took hold after the Champlain Towers South collapse on June 24, 2021. Not only did this horrific collapse claim 98 lives, but it also put a magnifying glass on construction practices, architectural and engineering standards, maintenance/

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