6+ hour, 6+ min ago (1194+ words) Nearly 15 years ago, Gerard Braud and his wife bought a raised cottage home in Mandeville, nestled on a sprawling yard with a live oak tree overlooking Lake Pontchartrain. He thought they would spend the rest of their lives in it. Life was affordable. His insurance premium with Lighthouse, a small company based in Louisiana, was around $4,400 a year. Then the storms came. He managed to avoid major damage from Hurricane Ida and other storms that hit south Louisiana in recent years. But Lighthouse went belly up in 2022, one of 12 insurers doing business in Louisiana to fold in the two years after Ida. Four years after the storm, he still can't find anyone willing to write him a policy. That forced Braud to get insurance from the state's insurer of last resort, Citizens, which charges him north of $12,000 a year for…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago (139+ words) Having passed the 20th anniversary of hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastating our state and in the last month of what has been a quiet hurricane season, I want to share our state's recent hurricane experience. Prior to 2005, the record for an insured loss event in our state was set in 2000, with a hailstorm causing just over $500 million in insured losses in New Orleans. That broke Louisiana's record for an insured loss catastrophe of just under $500 million in insured losses in 1992, caused by Hurricane Andrew. I share this data because I believe it clearly shows the trend of increasingly powerful and more frequent hurricanes since Katrina, but not to suggest that we can't live and prosper in south Louisiana. We saw homes on Grand Isle after Ida with minimal damage despite 140 mph winds....

2+ week, 5+ day ago (527+ words) Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple, foreground, faces a concerned crowd as he spoke about the insurance market at a town hall in Houma. He called insurance the "biggest crisis our state faces." Louisiana may soon require insurance companies to deliver bigger discounts to homeowners who put fortified roofs on their homes, as residents flock to get the new roofs and state officials grapple with an enduring insurance crisis that has brought stubbornly high premiums. Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple said Monday his office is moving to implement a rule that sets a "benchmark" discount that insurers must give to homeowners with fortified roofs. The state has doled out millions in taxpayer-funded grants to help homeowners put the roofs on their homes. Temple announced that 10,000 Louisianans now have fortified roofs, the third-most in the nation behind Alabama and North Carolina. This time last…...