Citizens Property Insurance
By
Insurance Commissioner
Based on past rounds of takeouts, the actual number of policies that will move from Citizens into the private market likely will be lower than the approved amounts. But the approvals would help shrink Citizens, which was created as an insurer of last resort but has become Florida's largest property insurer in recent years.
Yaworsky signed the orders Wednesday, a day before the state
During Thursday's rate hearing, Citizens President and CEO
The number of Citizens policies soared in recent years as private insurers dropped customers and raised rates because of financial problems. Citizens reached as many as 1.412 million policies last year and had nearly 1.229 million policies as of last week.
Citizens this summer has added thousands of policies a week as insurers have paused takeouts during the hurricane season, which started
State leaders and Citizens officials have long wanted to shrink Citizens, at least in part to reduce financial risks if
Under the depopulation program, Citizens customers are required to accept offers of coverage from private insurers if the offers are within 20 percent of the cost of Citizens premiums. For example, if a homeowner received an offer of coverage from a private insurer that is 19 percent higher than the Citizens premium, the homeowner would have to accept it.
Yaworsky's orders this week, however, included barring private carriers from making offers that would be more than 40 percent higher than what policyholders would pay to renew policies with Citizens. The orders, posted on the
The vast majority of proposals approved this week involve carriers assuming what are known as homeowners' multi-peril policies. But some proposals also included taking out wind-only policies, commercial residential policies and commercial non-residential policies. Commercial residential policies can include such things as condominium-association policies and apartment-building policies.
Manatee Insurance Exchange was approved to assume up to 81,000 policies, while
Also,
In addition, Condo Owners Reciprocal Exchange was approved to assume up to 200 commercial non-residential policies.
The takeouts are targeted for
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