State Farm Sets Army Of Staff To Deal With Ike

State Farm, the largest private property-casualty insurer in Texas, said it has deployed a battalion of personnel in that state and Florida to deal with Hurricane Ike.

The Bloomington, Ill.-based carrier, which has 21 percent of the Texas market, said it has a thousand team members staffing high-tech, centralized catastrophe services in Dallas and Jacksonville, Fla., and is steadily increasing staff in the face of the storm.

It also said it had spread hundreds of claim representatives, associates, agents and staff across Ike's potential impact area.

The company has 12 mobile office vehicles and satellite units to deploy.

According to the Insurance Information Institute, based on figures supplied by Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide, Texas coastal properties that are exposed to the hurricane have an insured value of more than $895 billion. This is the third highest in the country behind Florida and New York.

Facing the biggest possible insured loss in Texas from the hurricane is the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA), the state's insurer of last resort for coastal residential and commercial properties, providing wind and hail insurance in the event of catastrophic loss. The I.I.I. said TWIA covers 14 coastal counties and parts of Harris County.

From January of 2007 to March of this year, TWIA's number of policies in force has grown 46 percent, or 68,896 policies, to 218,354. Its total exposure to loss, including additional living expenses and business interruption, stands at $65.1 billion as of March this year.

TWIA has a total of $2.3 billion in funding for this season, and any shortfall would have to be recovered through assessments on insurers.

The county with the most liability in force for buildings and contents in TWIA is Galveston, accounting for 32 percent, or $18.4 billion of the total $59.6 billion, followed by Nueces, accounting for 20 percent, or $11.5 billion. Brazoria County is third at $10.3 billion, or 17 percent.

Yesterday, Steve E. Smith, president of Property Solutions, Carvill ReAdvisory, said losses from Hurricane Ike could exceed $10 billion to $15 billion.

Losses of that size would make the storm the third most costly hurricane in U.S. history in terms of insured losses, replacing Wilma, a Category 3 storm in 2005, which cost insurers $10.9 billion. Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 in 1992, cost insurers $22.9 billion. Katrina, a Category 3 storm that hit in 2005, remains the most costly at $43.6 billion.

The I.I.I. noted that eight of the 10 most expensive hurricanes in U.S. history have occurred since 2004.