The area’s two largest insurers alone — together controlling 33 percent of the auto insurance market and 42 percent of the homeowner’s market — have fielded about 60,000 claims, suggesting the total number could rise well beyond 100,000. State Farm has received 43,000 damage claims in metro St. Louis, while American Family reports 14,600.

Thousands of people of are driving their pock-marked cars to insurance adjusters camped out in parking lots around the region. Some repair shops report a shortage of replacement glass. Contractors are walking door-to-door to drum up business fixing leaky roofs and fractured siding. Officials are warning homeowners to be on guard for scams.

Officials in Maryland Heights say they’ve already stopped one shady business. The contractor promised to use “30-year” shingles, but town inspectors found he was using “15-year” shingles instead, said City Administrator Mark Levin.

“Three homeowners right next to each other had signed with the same contractor,” said Levin. The town brought no charges because building codes don’t specify the shingles to be used, and Levin wouldn’t name the firm.

The storm has created a bonanza for roofers, auto body shops and auto glass companies. Auto Glass Xpress in Affton reports 200 to 300 calls a day. The sudden demand is draining the glass supply.

“We experienced a shortage, and ended up having to wait anywhere from three days to two weeks for glass,” said office manager Nikki Nowlin. “Our glass man called in favors, contacted other warehouses and did whatever he could to get the glass so we wouldn’t have to keep the customers waiting.”

At Dent Devil in Ballwin, the cost of fixing pummeled auto bodies is running from $2,500 to $10,000. The rush of customers is “awesome,” said employee Becki Hahn.

The jump in activity in the local economy’s repair sector, coupled with the temporary financial assistance from insurance companies, results in short-term positive gain, said Howard Wall, director of the Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University. But in the long-run, those benefits “wash out.”

“There is a net loss because the insurance rates will eventually increase to reflect the storm’s damage,” Wall said.

He said that the deductible and the amount of time it takes affected consumers to repair their property should also be factored into the net loss.

‘HORSES ON THE ROOF’

Maryland Heights homeowner Dick Greenblatt knew he was in trouble when he heard a thunderous pounding at his Maryland Heights home on the night of April 28. It was so loud that his wife thought he’d fallen down the stairs. It sounded like “horses running up and down the roof,” Greenblatt said. He watched the hail pile up outside and worried about the fragile Vidalia onions he’d just planted.

His flattened garden was the least of his problems. The hail left half-circle gashes in the white vinyl siding on the garage attached to his home. The cost to repair: $9,318, according to an estimate from State Farm Insurance.

Insurers often have trouble matching the color of older damaged siding, and that’s caused problems after past storms. After a major hail storm in 2001, insurers said they would replace siding only on damaged sides of the house, even if the new color didn’t match the other sides. Missouri insurance regulators leaned heavily on companies to change their policy.

Greenblatt likes the answer he got from his insurer, State Farm. “If it cannot be duplicated, the insurance company will cover the costs for the whole house. If it can, then they’ll only cover the garage,” Greenblatt said. “We’re hoping it can’t.”

A State Farm spokesman confirmed that approach but other companies may not follow it.

Customers of American Family, the region’s second largest insurer, have to buy a special rider to get such coverage. Other insurers changed their policies after previous storms to make it clear that they replace only damaged parts, says Missouri Department of Insurance spokesman Travis Ford.

Greenblat’s home is one of nine on Holly Springs Drive with a contractor’s sign standing in the front yard. Across the street, contractor James Smith of Olneya Restoration Group climbed a ladder to point out a roof pockmarked with dark spots. Such bruising on the roof shingles is the most common form of damage, he said.

“The granules are meant to protect the shingles from the sun. The bruises compromise those granules and soon become holes because of the exposure to the heat,” Smith said. “Those holes can turn into leaks.”

The cost for damages varies from “$8,000 on the low end” to “$40,000 for larger homes,” he said.

The storm battered Olneya’s own headquarters off Craig Road. There were 10 baseball-sized holes for ever every 30 to 40 square-feet. “Water was pouring in every office,” said owner Crystal Anderson.

That left her feeling the same emotions as her customers. “It’s something that’s beyond your control, like a death in the family,” Anderson said. “It causes undue stress and all you want to do is get your house back to its original condition.”

Levin, the Maryland Heights administrator, says some homeowners are being stuck with bills that insurance won’t pay. Contractors removing damaged shingles on older homes often find rotten plywood underneath. That can cost a homeowner an additional $5,000, he said.

TOTAL IT, PLEASE

State Farm says its insurance adjusters are running 700 cars a day through five damage estimation centers set up in parking lots around the region.

Don Kennedy sat in the shade at a Schnucks lot off Dorsett road as adjusters examined his black Nissan Juke, dimpled with dents and suffering from a shattered windshield. Kennedy was hoping it would be declared a total loss.

“I … just want to get rid of it,” Kennedy said. “I won’t know what to do if it’s fixable.”

The St. Louis Better Business Bureau says it received 10,790 inquiries from customers checking on roofing contractors in the first two weeks of May – more than triple the number in the same period last year.

The BBB said it also has 20 requests from out-of-town roofing companies, mainly from Kansas City and Chicago, asking to be accredited. The BBB turns them down because they lack a one-year performance record in St. Louis.

Big hail storms often attract “storm-chaser” contractors from other areas. BBB president Michelle Corey advises consumers not to deal with them. “Our fist concern is, will they do the job? And if there are service issues later, will they come back and fix it?” She said.

Past hail storms in St. Louis produced streams of consumer complaints over inadequate insurance offers and poor contractor performance. Corey says it’s too soon to tell if this storm will produce the same.

Jim Gallagher of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this story

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The share of home loans at least 30 days late dropped to 7.4 percent from 7.58 percent in the previous three months, according to a report today from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The rate peaked at 10.1 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and was last lower in the third quarter of 2008, when it was 6.99 percent.

]]> http://finreviewer.com/mortgage-delinquency-rate-in-us-fall-to-2008-levels-bloomberg/feed/ http://finreviewer.com/edward-jones-profit-up-18-percent-in-first-quarter/ http://finreviewer.com/edward-jones-profit-up-18-percent-in-first-quarter/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 00:56:05 +0000 Wolf http://finreviewer.com/edward-jones-profit-up-18-percent-in-first-quarter/ Strengthened market conditions and increased fee revenue drove Edward Jones’ profit up 18 percent in the first quarter.

The Des Peres-based brokerage’s parent company, Jones Financial Companies, reported a $138.6 million profit for the first quarter that ended March 30, up from a $117.6 million profit a year ago.

Fee revenue increased 15 percent in the first quarter, to $622.9 million, up from $543.5 million a year ago.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company cited strengthening performance in market conditions, including the S&P 500 Index, during the first quarter as a driver in its profit gains payday loans with no fax.

“This increase was primarily due to higher levels of asset values on which fees were earned, driven by the continued investment of client dollars into advisory programs and the overall rise in the equity market averages during the first quarter of 2012,” the company said in the SEC filing.

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The Sukhoi Superjet-100 had 45 people aboard when it crashed into Mount Salak on Wednesday during a flight intended to woo potential Indonesian airline buyers.

All aboard are presumed dead, and helicopters have been ferrying the victims’ remains to Jakarta, the capital, for identification since Saturday.

It’s unclear what caused the crash about halfway through a planned 50-minute flight, so finding the “black box” recorder is a priority.

Dozens of Indonesian and Russian investigators were searching Sunday in a ravine near where the plane’s scattered wreckage was found on the slopes of the long-dormant volcano, 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Jakarta, top civil aviation official Herry Bakti Gumay said.

Local news station TVOne reported that search teams had spotted a device that might be the black box lodged in a tree near the bottom of the 500-meter-deep (1,500-foot-deep) ravine and were trying to reach it personal business card.

A landslide was triggered when the Superjet slammed into the side of the mountain, and much of the wreckage including the engine and landing gear were covered in rocks and dirt, the station reported.

The Superjet is Russia’s first new model of passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago.

Wednesday’s ill-fated flight was a demonstration for Indonesian fast-expanding domestic airlines that the manufacturer hoped would buy the jet.

Indonesia has added 36 new passenger and cargo airlines in the past five years and seen growth of 15 to 20 percent in the sector as companies rush to serve an emerging middle class amid the island nation’s economic boom.

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GM Europe lost $700 million in 2011 and company officials have expressed their determination to turn around the Opel and Vauxhall brands. They have rejected speculation that the company may decide in the near term on plant closures, but worries have persisted.

The governors of the four German states where Opel has plants issued a joint statement Friday that said they “stand together behind the German Opel facilities need a personal loan with bad credit.” They called for GM to “open global markets for the Opel brand.”

Mass-market carmakers such as Opel face a tough market in Europe amid intense competition, weak prices and economic troubles.

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Profit was 15.4 billion kroner ($2.65 billion), down from 16.1 billion kroner a year earlier.

Revenue in the quarter rose 34 percent to 194.8 billion kroner, from 145.7 billion kroner in the same period in 2011.

State-controlled Statoil said its equity production rose 11 percent to 2.19 million barrels of oil equivalents a day.

Last year’s first-quarter earnings were boosted by the sale of a 40-percent stake in the Kai Kos Dehseh oil sands project.

Statoil also said it had higher taxes in first quarter of 2012, partly offset by higher operating income payday loans online.

“Statoil grew production by 11 percent and realized high oil and gas prices in the first quarter of 2012, generating strong financial results for the period,” Statoil CEO Helge Lund said. “Production was as expected, and we maintain our guidance for 2012.”

Statoil said it aims to reach an equity production above 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2020 as new projects come on stream.

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Payrolls climbed 115,000, the smallest increase in six months, after a revised 154,000 gain in March that was larger than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate of 85 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 160,000 advance. The jobless rate fell to a three-year low of 8.1 percent, and earnings stagnated.

Stocks and bond yields fell on bets that a slowdown in hiring will restrain the wage growth needed to fuel the consumer spending that accounts for 70 percent of the world

Harvard and MIT announced a partnership Wednesday to offer free online courses to students around the world. The initiative, known as edX, will be run by a non-profit organization controlled by the two schools. Each has committed $30 million to the effort.

The first official courses will be announced this summer and are set to begin in the fall.

EdX students won’t receive university credit for the classes, which will span a variety of disciplines. There’s no admissions process, but there are exams and other assessments, with certificates available "for a modest fee" to students who demonstrate mastery of the material.

The project builds on an online education program that MIT announced last year. A prototype course on circuits and electronics began in March and attracted more than 120,000 students, though only about 10,000 stayed with the course through the mid-term exam, an MIT spokeswoman said.

The Harvard-MIT project faces some competition in the push to make high-quality educational courses available online easy payday loans.

Last month, Princeton, Stanford, Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania announced that they would offer free Web-based courses through a for-profit company called Coursera that was founded by two Stanford computer science professors. One of those professors, Andrew Ng, taught a free online course in machine learning this past fall with an enrollment of more than 100,000 students.

There’s also Udacity, co-founded by a former Stanford professor, and Khan Academy, which boasts 3,100 free educational videos across a variety of subjects.

MIT and Harvard said that they hope to eventually partner with other universities to expand the offerings on the edX platform.

"Harvard and MIT will use these new technologies and the research they will make possible to lead the direction of online learning in a way that benefits our students, our peers, and people across the nation and the globe," Harvard president Drew Faust said. 

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