RMI2110 – Personal Insurance Planning is a 3-credit course on the insurance an individual or family needs: identifying personal loss exposures and matching them to appropriate coverage across auto, homeowners, health, disability, life, and long-term care, with attention to how much coverage is enough and how the pieces fit together.
The course sits on the personal side of the risk management sequence, complementing the property and casualty course (RMI2212). Its practical value is unusual among business courses: nearly everyone will make these decisions, most people make them poorly, and the consequences of a gap are concentrated at exactly the moment a household can least absorb them. Students consistently report that this is the course they use personally within months.
Content covers risk and risk management — identifying personal exposures, and the four responses (avoid, reduce, retain, transfer); how insurance works — pooling, the law of large numbers, adverse selection, and moral hazard; the personal financial planning context — where insurance sits alongside saving, investing, and estate planning; automobile insurance — liability, medical payments, uninsured motorist, collision, comprehensive, and Florida's no-fault system; homeowners and renters insurance — the standard forms, Coverages A through D, personal liability, and the exclusions that matter; flood — the NFIP, private flood, and why it is separate; valuation and limits — replacement cost versus actual cash value, coinsurance, and scheduling valuables; umbrella and excess liability; health insurance — plan types, cost sharing, networks, the marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid, and health savings accounts; disability income insurance — definitions of disability, elimination periods, and benefit periods; long-term care — exposure, coverage, and alternatives; life insurance — term, whole, universal, and variable; needs analysis; beneficiaries and ownership; annuities at an introductory level; social insurance — Social Security disability and survivor benefits, and workers' compensation; the buying process — agents, brokers, direct writers, comparison, and insurer financial strength; and claims — what to do, and common disputes.
Offered at Florida institutions with risk management and insurance programs.
Florida's personal insurance market is one of the most consequential in the country and one of the most volatile, which produces steady professional demand across carriers, agencies, and adjusting firms. Medicare-focused agencies are a particularly large Florida segment given the state's demographics, and bilingual agents are at a clear advantage in South and Central Florida.
Directly consequential and specific to this state. Florida operates a no-fault automobile insurance system requiring Personal Injury Protection (PIP), which pays a portion of your own medical expenses and lost wages regardless of who caused the crash, up to a statutory limit — historically $10,000, with a lower limit applying unless emergency medical condition criteria are met.
Three things follow that drivers routinely get wrong. PIP is not health insurance and is not liability coverage — $10,000 does not go far in a serious injury. Florida does not require bodily injury liability coverage in the way most states do, which means the driver who hits you may carry no coverage for your injuries at all. And consequently uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage matters more in Florida than almost anywhere, because the state's uninsured driver rate is among the highest in the country — yet it is optional and is routinely declined by people trying to lower a premium.
Florida's no-fault framework has been the subject of repeated legislative attempts at repeal or reform. Verify the current statute with the Office of Insurance Regulation rather than relying on a textbook edition or this guide.
The single most important thing a Floridian can learn from this course. Standard homeowners and renters policies exclude flood — entirely — which is why the National Flood Insurance Program exists and why a private flood market has developed. Storm surge is flood. Rising water is flood. Wind driving rain through a damaged roof is generally not, which is where post-hurricane disputes concentrate.
Practical points worth carrying: flood insurance is available to anyone in a participating community, not only to those in a mapped high-risk zone, and a substantial share of flood claims come from outside high-risk zones; there is typically a 30-day waiting period, so it cannot be bought as a storm approaches; and NFIP coverage has limits and does not cover everything a homeowner assumes. Look up your own address on the FEMA map service and read your own declarations page — instructors who assign this report that it changes student behavior.
Consequential arithmetic. Florida property policies carry a separate hurricane deductible that is typically a percentage of the dwelling coverage amount — commonly 2, 5, or 10 percent — rather than a flat figure. On a home insured for $400,000, a 5 percent hurricane deductible is $20,000 before the insurer pays anything, while the all-other-perils deductible on the same policy might be $1,000.
Florida law requires insurers to offer specified deductible options and to disclose them, and the hurricane deductible generally applies once per season rather than per storm. The moment most homeowners learn this is after a loss. Students should be able to explain it clearly — and should check their own or their family's policy. Statutory requirements here have been amended repeatedly; verify current law.
The organizing principle of personal risk management, and the one that most improves ordinary decisions. Insurance is expensive protection against catastrophe, not a way to pay for predictable expenses — because every dollar of predictable claim comes back with administrative cost attached.
Applied consistently, that principle says: take higher deductibles on things you could pay for, and use the savings to buy higher liability limits, which cover the thing that could ruin you. It says extended warranties and low-deductible add-ons are usually poor value. It says an umbrella policy is one of the best values in personal insurance — a large amount of additional liability coverage for a modest premium. And it says the most underinsured exposures for most working people are the ones with the largest tail: liability, disability, and, for those with dependents, life.
Worth naming because it is consistently underappreciated. For a working person, the ability to earn income is usually their largest asset — larger than the house — and the probability of a disabling condition during a working career is substantially higher than most people assume, and higher than the probability of death during the same period.
The details matter enormously in this coverage. An "own occupation" definition pays if you cannot perform your own profession; an "any occupation" definition pays only if you cannot work at all, and is far cheaper for a reason. Elimination periods, benefit periods, and whether benefits are taxable (which depends on who paid the premium) all change the real value. Group coverage through an employer is valuable and typically limited and not portable. This is the section of the course most likely to change a student's own financial decisions.
Practical guidance on the most-argued question in personal insurance. Term insurance provides a death benefit for a defined period at low cost, with no cash value. Permanent insurance (whole, universal, variable) combines a death benefit with a savings or investment component and costs substantially more per dollar of death benefit.
The mainstream financial planning position is that most people with temporary needs — a mortgage, dependent children, a working spouse's income replacement — are best served by term insurance, with the difference invested separately. Permanent insurance has legitimate uses: estate liquidity, special needs planning, business continuation, and lifelong dependents. What a student should understand clearly is that commission structures differ substantially between the two, which is a real factor in what gets recommended. A course that teaches the analysis rather than a conclusion is doing its job, and a student who can perform a needs analysis is protected from both overselling and underinsuring.
Actionable career step. Selling insurance in Florida requires licensure from the Department of Financial Services — commonly the 2-20 General Lines agent license, the 4-40 Customer Representative license, or the 2-15 for life, health, and variable annuity — obtained through prelicensing education, an examination, fingerprinting, and a background check.
Florida exempts holders of certain designations and qualifying college coursework from parts of the prelicensing requirement, and college RMI coursework can satisfy some of it. Ask your instructor and DFS specifically — it can save both time and money, and getting licensed while still in school makes a graduate immediately employable rather than hired contingent on passing later. Requirements change; verify with DFS directly.
RMI2110 sits alongside RMI2001 (principles of risk management), RMI2212 (personal and business property insurance), and life and health numbers in the RMI22xx range, typically within a College Credit Certificate in Risk Management and Insurance or an A.S. concentration. Upper-division risk management appears as RMI3 numbers, with Florida State's program among the best known nationally. SCNS equivalency applies to the same number at the same level, never across numbers; confirm articulation before assuming a 2000-level course satisfies an upper-division major requirement.
Generated September 1, 2026 · Updated September 1, 2026