Published: May 21, 2024
If you tuned in to Fox 11’s Good Day LA on Friday, May 17, 2024, you may have caught a familiar face – Robert Feldman, a respected insurance professional from Westlake Village. Feldman made an appearance on the popular morning news show to provide valuable tips and advice on navigating the often-complex world of insurance.
As the CEO of WOWS Insurance Services, Feldman has built a reputation for his expertise and commitment to educating consumers on insurance matters. His segment on Good Day LA allowed him to share his knowledge with a wider audience, addressing common concerns and misconceptions surrounding insurance policies.
During the interview, Feldman covered a range of topics, from understanding WOWS newest policy terms and identifying changes in the insurance market.
Video transcript:
Nice. Robert, could you say welcome back to GLA Plus?
Yeah.
Can you say that?
Welcome back to GLA Plus.
Wow. This man’s voice. I know you’re talking insurance, but the voice, my friend. Yes. You’ve got the voice. The deep voice to go along with what we’re doing here. I love it, Robert.
Oh, thank you.
I want your voice. I told you that. Well, that’s awesome. I told you that. I’ll tell you, this deep voice, though, you echo through walls. The only problem, you’ll echo through walls. So it’s a little different. You need an insurance policy to cover your voice.
Exactly.
Well, I think two or three studios over are hearing me talk now at this point. Those of you who are at home, you’re like, who’s Robert? Great voice, but who is he? He’s our plus one today, and he has been in the insurance business for about 25 years or so, right? Served as a public speaker for the California Realtors Association and specializes in insurance for high-risk fire zones. Do it all. Robert Feldman, welcome.
Thank you. I’m honored to be here. I’m really kind of excited to talk about, there’s a lot of things that we gotta get out. I know we’re in a short window, so I promise to make sure I’m really good about stay in window type, okay, for you guys.
We’re going to give you one question and then take it from there. Go. You got it. Why are insurance companies pulling out of California?
There’s a lot of different reasons from different angles. Really what’s happened over the last 10 years, I use the word of, I love the saying of Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Right.
The industry has done the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Okay. So there’s been a lot of companies that pulled out right now, it’s kind of a tough market. The good news is we’ve been very successful as we’re considered a wholesaler in really stabilizing the market. There’s a lot of people that believe the sky is falling right now, and it’s not. There are carriers, there are a lot of companies that are still in play. I speak at this all the time from realtor events to community events. I just got to do the Houdini House. Have you ever been to the Houdini House?
No, where’s that?
Oh, my goodness.
Where’s that? Is it in the hills? I’m a valley kid.
I mean, Laurel Canyon coming over the hill, incredible place to go to. And I was honored to speak at that location. Just different, different events. Just really across California trying to make sure everyone realizes the sky isn’t quite falling. It looks like it is, but it’s not. And it’s not just here, though. It’s also in places like Florida where you have bad weather. It’s the western United States. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sorry. This is something. And that’s kind of what we really want to get out and talk about is about what changes need to be made in stabilizing this really important industry. Bottom line is we don’t have homes. I make the joke all the time with realtors when I’m speaking in front of realtors or different consumer groups. If one goes, so do all the others. How does the banking industry work if there’s no insurance in California? For homes. How do the realtors sell homes? You’re talking about a really complicated intertwining.
I’d almost joke around and say we’re cousins at that point.
Yeah, it’s a domino effect. It is a domino effect. It affects entire neighborhoods, cities, tax income for different communities. The effect is so much larger than just trying to get a home and then having to cover the homeowner’s insurance.
Absolutely.
And there’s a lot of things that we recommend to brokers. We appoint brokers all the time. There’s a lot of bad practices that are going on in California right now. And we’re really trying to stamp that out. You can’t have consumers that think there’s just one choice or things of that nature. It’s really important to get out in front and we’re really talking to consumers. As you probably read in the news, some of the really big carriers are pulling back. State Farm did the announcement, which is the latest one, that really kind of shocked everybody. Being in the industry and working with a lot of senior leadership, a lot of different insurance companies, I get to do the fun things, by the way. I was just in London and doing the reinsurance meeting where basically insurance started.
Yeah.
Was incredible. But really what I noticed is like with state farms announcement, they are canceling. I’ll use Pacific Palisades.
Right.
Okay, that’s not too far, central of L.A. just outside of Malibu. They’re canceling 1,626 homes.
Whoa.
That is 69 percent of the total homes in the Pacific Palisades because… state farm is pulling back right now.
But because? What, wildfire? Risk of landslide? Wildfire, right?
Actually, it’s a lot of different reasons. State Farm was recently downgraded from an A rating to a B rating for overextending. Well, in the financial world, people get moved from an A to an A-, it’s earth-shattering. To go from an A to a B is… This is not profitable.
But why are they doing that? Is it because too many of the people in that same vicinity have the same policies, so then it’s a bigger risk? Like, did they not see that coming? How do you, what do you do with that?
You are so great. That’s a softball pitch for me right there. You threw a good one for me on that one, and I appreciate it. Really what it is, is there’s, and this is what we’ve been really talking about throughout the industry as a company. When I was in London, I had a spectacular time. I had a representative, CJ Coleman, is an absolute great company from London that brings me around to these reinsurance companies. And what is devastating the industry right now is proximity. So to your point, there’s too much of a clustering of insurance companies. We need to re-engineer insurance in California. We’ve launched a program to do that very thing, and we’re going to be very successful doing it.
I have a question.
Go.
You’ve got to come get me. Come on. My valley contact. Come on now. Come on, get me. So I think consumers want to know, homeowners want to know, how quickly is this going to happen? This whole reinvention of the system. Are rate hikes going to go down instead of up? And can people get insured?
Okay, I’ll go backwards. Okay, let’s do it. Okay, right now in the state of California, it doesn’t matter if you’re a 2,000 square foot house or a 20,000 square foot house. There are carriers that are writing. Now, six months ago, I have to admit, it was definitely touch and go there were sections of California that just didn’t have it. L.A. has always been pretty safeguarded by the way we for us. I joke around say good day L.A. we’re very safeguarded compared to a lot of areas. Santa Barbara is one of the worst areas for the insurance companies um, this and when you talk about rates I don’t really see conceivably rates going down in the short term, but what we’re building and changing will affect that you have to change certain things. The program we launched actually is going to be one of the very first ones that’s fully transferable from seller to buyers. So what you’re doing is you’re taking out the fluctuation of the market. You need to re-engineer and help insurance companies defend themselves and spread risk across California, because that’s the number one reason why rates are going up. The number one reason isn’t about fires. Here’s a really scary concept. Fire scores. Every home has a fire score in California. And the higher typically has higher rates, and they’re taking rates. What’s interesting when we ran the analytics is, believe it or not, when you bunch together, but perfectly spread across California, the lower FIRE scores and the higher FIRE scores have almost the same exact percentage of loss. Now, think about that for a second.
How creative.
That’s when I make a comment about changing. We need to fix this. Spread the pain. It’s not so much even to spread the pain. It’s spreading the risks properly. so that the insurance companies are not oversaturated. And you have to make sure everyone kind of lines up for this very thing. So when is that change happening? Now. I came back from London, besides having some really good food and some great drinks and some long great days, we’re changing it now. This is now. So this is where it’s like the line in the sand. We help fix to make sure people have insurance. As a wholesaler, we did that. We’re bringing help and bringing companies back in.
But we are going to turn the tides now.
Love it. Get it done. You have to. You know, you got a big job.
Exactly.
I keep moving. I keep moving.
You have a moving target at this point, right?
Sometimes you walk into community meetings, like I did one at the Houdini house. And I honestly thought in the beginning, do I have to be on a constant movement? Because there’s some people that are pretty angry. I’m like, duck, duck. Turn. Get out of the way. No. It was actually a great event and I speak throughout California. I do Monterey. The Monterey Realtor Association has been great for me to come and speak. Santa Barbara does the same thing. We were just in San Diego.
Actually, tell people where they can find you.
Absolutely. You can find me. Robert Feldman is simple. You can see WOWS Insurance. W-O-W-S. The joke, everyone forgets the S. W-O-W-S insurance.com. You can see our website. And I pretty much am crazy enough to answer every one of them. So I have a good team, but I’m always on to make sure I respond.
Thank you. Thank you.
Make it easy to understand. Appreciate you. And listen, I’m always around. So you’re going to have these questions a million times.
If you ever do children’s audio books, let me know.
Well, you’re going to want me to fix the homes right now, though, because that’s the fix. So I’ll come in and fix those. I’ll come in and fix those for right now.
So every time you want me to come in, you can just make a call. I’m in. All right.
Thank you. Thank you. Have a great weekend.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.