January, 2006
By The California legislature recently made the following changes to the laws regulating insurance in California.   The bill requires the Curriculum Committee of the Department of Insurance to make recommendations to the Insurance Commissioner to instruct fire and casualty broker-agents and personal lines broker-agents in proper methods of: 1) estimating the replacement value of structures; and, 2) estimating appropriate levels of homeowners' coverage.
  The bill requires that, for a covered loss relating to a declared "state of emergency" - as that term is defined by the Government Code - additional living expense coverage "shall be" for a period of 24 months, although such coverage is still to be governed by all applicable policy provisions (including policy limits).
  Finally, and perhaps most notably, insurers are now required to provide insureds with a list of items that the insurer "believes may be covered under the policy." Although the bill allows the Department of Insurance to develop a list of these potentially covered items, it does not require that the Department develop the list, nor does it state whether an insurer may rely on that list without reservation or must do so only at its peril.