Bill Tracking Report as of 3/14/2024
Your Louisiana REALTORS® Bill Review Team met Wednesday, March 13th to determine the positions LR is taking on over 200 pieces of legislation.
Two complete versions of the Louisiana REALTORS® Bill Report are available below. One report has the bills in numerical order, and the other report sorts bills by Louisiana REALTORS® positions on the bills. Updated bill reports and a summary of the week’s events will be posted on the Louisiana REALTORS® website each Friday.
The first week of the 2024 Legislative Session was generally slow, but things will pick up next week when bills aimed to improve the property insurance market will be heard in committees.
These bills are of particular interest to members because in the 2023 Louisiana REALTORS® Getting to Home study, you made it clear your number one Louisiana REALTORS® advocacy goal is improving our property insurance market.
Therefore, Louisiana REALTORS® is supporting several bills that have been filed to provide Louisiana Department of Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple the necessary tools to bring insurers back to Louisiana, and to retain all the tools necessary to protect consumers from ‘bad actors’.
These bills would bring bold changes to Louisiana’s insurance market and end the days of our state being the outlier in many areas. Change is never easy, but Louisiana cannot expect different results if it is to maintain the status quo.
A few of these measures include the following:
1. Approval of Rates: HB 613 by Representative Gabe Firment and SB 295 by Heather Cloud
These bills would change Louisiana from requiring “prior approval” of proposed insurance rates to a “file & use” system of approving insurance rates, thereby allowing insurers to begin using an actuarily sound market rate subject to receiving the approval of the Commissioner of Insurance within 30 days. This would allow insurers to better manage their business and have more flexibility to price their products.
2. Good Faith Claims Process: HB 678 by Representative Gabe Firment and SB 323 by Senator Kirk Talbot
These bills would establish and clarify the rights, duties, and timelines imposed on both the policyholder and insurer to ensure swift resolution of an insured’s claims, including offering insurance companies cure periods. SB 232 would retain an insured’s ability to file a bad faith claim and receive the same court-awarded damages and attorney fees they could obtain under current law. HB 678 would adopt Texas’s prompt payment of claims framework, including its provisions on cure periods, penalties/interest and attorney’s fees.
3. 3-year Rule Modifications: SB 370 by Senator Adam Bass and HB 611 by Representative Gabe Firment
With a few exceptions, Louisiana’s 3-year rule essentially marries an insurer to an insured if the property insurance is in place for three years. Louisiana is the only place on the planet with this type of law giving us a notorious reputation in the insurance industry worldwide.
If adopted, both bills would allow insurers to slowly remove policies held under this law and provide that any policies written after August 1st would not be subject to the 3-year rule. There is talk of amendments being proposed to the bills to limit the number of existing policies that could be reduced in any given parish and any given zip code.
