Fentress County will see an increase in cost for property and casualty insurance as well as workers compensation insurance for the incoming fiscal year.
County Commissioners selected a new option of insurance that contains a $5,000 deductible for property and $2,500 deductible on general liability and comprehensive and collision for vehicles. Insurance Advisor Jessica Parrott said the insurance had a significant increase due to the high number of claims the county had filed over the past few years. Parrott said a majority of the claims are from property claims.
“Tennessee has just been hit hard in the last two years with regard to wind,” Parrott said. “And so those claims are frequent, but unfortunately, we can’t control them, but they do payout losses, so as we like to say in the insurance world, ‘Those roof claims will get ya’.”
Fentress County Finance Director Tyler Arms said the county does not have much of a choice, as the county would face a budget deficit with either of the options available.
“Regardless of any of these, we don’t have enough budget to cover any of these options, even if you went with how we are now, we don’t have enough budgeted to cover that.” Arms said. “That option one, if we stayed the same, I think what was it, $113,000, that we would have to budget more.”
Parrott said the insurance cost will increase by an estimated $100,000, but the new option will provide $43,000 in premium savings.
Parrott said the county has met to find a way to try and reduce the number of claims moving forward.
“When you’ve got some of these smaller claims, it can be better to pay those out of the county budget rather than filing them towards insurance, so that it doesn’t reflect that loss ratio, and this is a way to do that and plus get some premium savings associated with that.”
