How the clocks actually work for a board

Date-stamp everything and keep a claim log. The rule is only useful to someone who can say when notice was given, when each communication was sent, and when proof of loss was submitted. An association whose claim correspondence lives in a manager's email folder cannot assert any of these deadlines.

Submit a properly executed proof of loss and note the date. The 21-day decision clock runs from that, not from the date of the loss and not from the adjuster's inspection. Boards frequently wait months in the belief that the carrier is deciding, when no proof of loss has been submitted and no clock has started.

Write, and expect fifteen days. A written question that suggests a response is appropriate triggers a fifteen-day obligation. A phone call does not create a record.

Escalate to the Department when the clocks are missed. A complaint to the Ohio Department of Insurance is free, and a pattern of missed deadlines is precisely what the unfair-practices rule addresses. Our Ohio insurance requirements page covers the coverage the policy has to carry in the first place.

The allocation fight the rules do not settle

The recurring Ohio dispute is not about timing. It is about who pays the deductible on a loss that damages both common elements and a unit — and that is a declaration question with real money in it now that lenders have moved.

Fannie Mae caps a master-policy per-unit deductible at $50,000, and the Selling Guide separately caps the overall deductible at 5 percent of the master coverage amount. Freddie Mac's cap is 5 percent of the building coverage limit per occurrence. Where separate deductibles apply to specific perils such as windstorm or wildfire, each must independently satisfy the maximums.

And any per-unit deductible at all obliges every financed owner to carry a unit-owner policy at least equal to it. That means an Ohio board's deductible decision is now simultaneously a premium decision, a financeability decision and an obligation imposed on every owner in the building. It should not be made by an agent on a renewal form.

Where the residual market sits

For a unit owner who cannot buy coverage at all, the Ohio FAIR Plan writes a unit-owners form. Under the plan of operation, an applicant must show that “at least two insurance companies authorized to do business in Ohio have declined to grant the coverage requested in the application,” and the ceiling is two million dollars per location.

The Plan's own conditions carry a trap for association owners: it will not insure a property where there are “delinquent taxes, assessments, penalties or other such charges upon the property,” and it requires the property not be “in violation of any building, housing, air pollution, sanitation, health, fire or safety code or ordinance or rule.”

A recorded assessment lien can therefore foreclose an owner's last insurance option — and an open municipal violation on a common element can do the same to an owner who has no power to fix it.

The one thing to do this month

Ask your broker for the master policy's deductible structure in writing: the per-occurrence figure, any per-unit figure, and any separate wind, hail or water deductibles. Then check each against the lender caps, and tell owners what unit-owner coverage they are now obliged to carry.

That is a one-email job and it is the single most consequential insurance fact an Ohio board can establish about its own building.