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We summarize the main results of our country studies for the market for property insurance. We draw conclusions about the best institutional organization for this market. We conclude that both for the reasons of efficiency (lower sales & administrative costs) & to avoid problems of risk selection, public monopolies should play an important role. A further advantage of such a solution is that local monopolies have strong incentives to invest in efficient preventive measures. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper studies the evolution of hurricane insurance in Florida over the last decades. Hurricanes (and other natural catastrophes) are typically referred to as uninsurable" risks. The more exposed property owners find it difficult to obtain insurance cover from the private market and/or can do so only at premiums that substantially exceed their expected claims costs. The state of Florida has reacted to the incapacity of the private sector to insure hurricane risks at reasonable premium levels with the creation of Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (an insurer of last resort) and the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund. Their existence has resulted in substantial premium reductions for the Florida property owners. Both institutions have the possibility of spreading the costs of a major hurricane over a (very) large number of policy holders through after the event compulsory assessments. The risk borne by each individual property owner is thus reasonably small, with substantial benefits for consumers as a group. Looking forward the challenge to the policy maker will be to fine-tune the operation (premium structure) of these two institutions so as to increase their political acceptance. To this end it will be necessary to limit the implicit subsidy of the bad risks" through the good risks".

It is widely recognized that ?market failure? prevents efficient risk sharing in natural disaster insurance. As a consequence, many countries adopted institutional frameworks presenting public sector participation, often praised as public-private partnerships. We define risk selection as a situation where private companies pass insurance of high risk agents on to the public ?partner?, arguing that this is a potentially important issue in such situations. In order to illustrate our concerns we look at the case of France. We build a simple model that incorporates the main features of the system, such as the uniform premium rate in both high and low risk regions and the existence of a state reinsurer. We show that in our model, risk selection is likely to be present at equilibrium and discuss the policy options available. When comparing with the actual situation in France we find that the 'stylized facts? of the system correspond to our results. Additionally, the policies implemented by the government correspond to policies characterized to reduce the potential of risk selection.