Declarations

“I never even talked about insurance, really up until the last year and a half. … Now, it’s a significant impact for the borrower as they qualify for the loan.”

— Said Julee Felsman, senior vice president of mortgage lending at Guaranteed Rate, one of the country’s largest home lenders by volume, reflecting on the impact rising home insurance costs are having on people trying to buy a home, especially in California. Bloomberg reported that home insurance premiums are up 55% across the U.S. from five years ago, according to a Guaranteed Rate report.

“Southwest is following its robust safety management system and is in contact with the Federal Aviation Administration to understand and address any irregularities with the aircraft’s approach to the airport. … Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of our customers and employees.

— A Southwest Airlines spokesperson said after an incident in which a Southwest plane triggered a low-altitude alert as it prepared to land in Oklahoma City but was still nine miles from the airport, sparking a federal investigation. According to Flightradar24, the plane descended to about 525 feet above the ground as it passed over Oklahoma City suburbs on the way to the airport. The Dallas-based airline said the plane, a Boeing 737, landed safely.

“Across the country there’s just an education gap when it comes to coverage for flood events.”

— Said Matt Duffy, managing director and chief risk officer at Neptune Flood, a provider of private flood insurance. Duffy said residents of inland states are often surprised to learn heir homeowners policies don’t cover most flood events. Floodwaters damaged hundreds of properties recently across parts of the Midwest but according to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), relatively few people in Midwest states, especially in Iowa and Minnesota, have flood insurance policies in place.

“With this new guidance, we are putting insurers on notice: New York will not tolerate bias against our affordable housing providers. … Insurance discrimination drives up costs for property owners and renters and puts countless affordable homes at risk. My administration is stepping up our enforcement of housing discrimination of all kinds to ensure fairness in our housing market and to keep costs down for all New Yorkers.”

— Said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul regarding guidance from the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) to commercial insurers stating that insurers are prohibited from inquiring about or making coverage decisions based on a property’s status as an affordable housing development or a tenant’s source of income.

“They’re becoming more aggressive in the ways they try to make money. … It’s trying to create more pain so they get paid more, or they cause more disruption.”

— Kevin Mandia, co-founder of Ballistic Ventures and the former chief executive officer of Google’s threat intelligence firm Mandiant, said of recent cyber attacks on institutions and businesses across the globe. Recent high-profile incidents such as the hack of a London hospital’s health records and the attacks on car-dealership software provider CDK Global show how cybercrime crews are increasingly turning to more sinister techniques to try to bend major companies to their will, abetted by new technology, Bloomberg reported.

“Today’s action is part of the FCC’s ongoing effort to ensure that the public has reliable communications, including access to 911.”

— Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement after Verizon Wireless agreed to pay a $1 million penalty over a 2022 service outage that left people across the Southeast unable to call 911. The cell phone service provider experienced an outage in October 2022 and took action to prevent similar problems. But some failures recurred, resulting in a 104-minute outage for many customers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, the FCC said.