Effective June 30th 2009, the My Safe Florida Home Program unfortunately comes to an end, or at least a sabbatical for a period awaiting additional funding hopefully in the coming years. After almost three years the program has been a great success. Over 400,000 FREE inspections were conducted, almost 35,000 homeowners received a grant for mitigation purposes and almost all received an insurance discount of some nature or other.

Under, Florida Statute 627.711, as modified by Florida House Bill 1495 during the Spring 2009 legislative session, changes were made to the statute as far as the certification of MSFH inspectors and who can sign the OIR 1802 Mitigation form.

As announced by the MSFH home program office / Department of Financial Services, ALL MSFH inspectors will be placed on an “inactive list” on the MSFH web site and will no longer be certified. The department of Financial services will also not be certifying any inspectors past June 30th 2009.

Under the MSFH program, Wind Certification entities were under contract to provide oversight and quality control on every inspector and inspection conducted by the inspectors under their responsibility to ensure the quality of data for processing of each report. Wind Certification entities will also no longer take responsibility for the inspections these inspectors conduct under the above statutes, unless of course they are still working under the WCE’s own program for inspections.

What does this mean for Insurance Carriers? - MSFH inspectors are no longer qualified to sign off on OIR 1802 forms.

What should underwriting departments do?

In essence MSFH inspectors are no longer qualified for signature of the OIR 1802 Uniform Verification Mitigation Form after June 30th as there is no oversight being conducted on any reports by MSFH inspectors, unless of course they are working under qualified companies that meet the following criteria.

1. A building code inspector certified under s. 468.607;

2. A general, building or residential contractor licensed under s. 489.111;

3. A professional engineer licensed under s. 471.015 who has passed the appropriate equivalency test of the Building Code Training Program as required by s. 553.841; or

4. A professional architect licensed under s. 481.213.

Insurance carriers and underwriters should qualify every inspection company signing off on mitigation credits or simply, use the www.paperlessinspectors.com program, which follows all the qualification criteria and more of the MSFH program.

What does this mean for our inspector network here on www.paperlessinspectors.com.

Inspectors working under Inspection Depot Inc., www.paperlessinspectors.com are required to continue to follow all the quality assurance and oversight requirements. Where inspectors do not meet the requirements for oversight and QA, outlined above, qualified inspection companies have been approved by Inspection Depot to provide the same under their program, so as to ensure the most accurate inspection reports possible for every client, insurance carrier, insurance agent etc.