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Financing veteran urges no premium rollbacks
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 10, 2003
With his 50-plus years in the mortgage business, the savings-and-loan business and the homeowners insurance business, Jimmy DuBose could be excused if he figured that he had seen it all.
Then came Texas' homeowners insurance fiasco.
DuBose is the force behind Colonial Savings, a $1.1 billion institution that survived the tumultuous 1980s, which saw scores of competitors fail. He also founded Colonial Mortgage, which turned 50 last year, and DuBose & Associates Insurance, which turns 50 this year.
Finally, there's Colonial Lloyds, which earned about $13 million worth of homeowners insurance policies last year. As a Lloyds insurer, the company is exempt from state regulation, a status that has come under fire as lawmakers wrestle with the state's historically high and lately higher homeowners insurance premiums.
But the soft-spoken DuBose has advice for those who advocate whipping up on Lloyds companies and mandating premium rollbacks.
"We're barely surviving now," he says. "If they try to lower the premiums, it won't fly. They'll have to get rid of the lawyers and the mold and the hail."
Then he points to Colonial Lloyds' most recent annual regulatory statement: It lost $3.5 million last year.
The company will probably trim its writings this year, "depending on the availability of reinsurance," says D'Ann Woodle, manager of DuBose & Associates Insurance.
Despite the unknowns, DuBose calls himself an optimist regarding the homeowners insurance market. "We think the business can be profitable," he says, as the policies concentrate on losses from accidents and weather, rather than maintenance-related water and mold damage.
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