Florida Office of Insurance Regulation Approves Removal of up to 427,584 Policies from Citizens
Sep 4, 2014
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (“OIR”) announced today, September 4, 2014, that it has approved the removal of up to 425,357 personal residential policies and 2,227 commercial residential polices from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (“Citizens”) by the following 14 companies:
- American Integrity Insurance Company of Florida — up to 15,000 personal residential policies (14,637 Personal Lines Account (“PLA”)/363 Coastal Account (“CA”))
- Avatar Property & Casualty Insurance Company — up to 10,000 personal residential PLA policies
- Capitol Preferred Insurance Company — up to 30,000 personal residential PLA policies
- Elements Property Insurance Company — up to 60,000 personal residential policies (54,000 PLA/6,000 CA)
- Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Company — up to 70,000 personal residential policies (62,500 PLA/7,500 CA) and up to 200 commercial residential Commercial Lines Account (CLA) policies
- Mount Beacon Insurance Company — up to 47,900 personal residential PLA policies
- Olympus Insurance Company — up to 30,000 personal residential policies (23,379 PLA/6,621 CA)
- Safepoint Insurance Company — up to 18,000 personal residential policies (15,000 PLA/3,000 CA)
- Southern Fidelity Insurance Company — up to 30,000 personal residential PLA policies
- Southern Fidelity Property & Casualty Insurance Company — up to 30,000 personal residential PLA policies
- Southern Oak Insurance Company — up to 10,000 personal residential policies (8,500 PLA/1,500 CA)
- Tower Hill Signature Insurance Company — up to 6,164 personal residential policies (4,931 PLA/1,233 CA)
- United Property & Casualty Insurance Company — up to 51,293 personal residential policies (42,573 PLA/8,720 CA) and up to 2,027 commercial residential policies (1,824 CLA/203 CA)
- Universal Insurance Co. of North America — up to 17,000 personal residential PLA policies
“The announcement by OIR today is welcome news, because it shows that the office believes the private market is robust, financially sound and looking for opportunities in the Florida market,” said Barry Gilway, Citizens’ President, CEO and Executive Director. “We will have to wait and see what the final numbers are, but the initial indications are promising.”
Citizen’s PLA and CLA comprises mostly non-coastal properties, while the CA comprises coastal properties.
The take-out periods are November 18, 2014 for personal residential impacting both the PLA and CA, and November 4, 2014 for commercial residential impacting both the CLA and CA. This is part of the State of Florida’s ongoing effort to reduce the number of policies in Citizens and transfer them to the private insurance market.
According to the OIR, today’s announcement brings the total number of policies approved for take-outs this year to 894,156 and the actual number of policies removed from Citizens as of August 30, 2014 to 124,995. By statute, policyholders may choose to remain covered by Citizens; however, they may be at risk of higher assessments.
The OIR has published a “Take-Out Companies” Web page at: http://www.floir.com/Sections/PandC/TakeoutCompanies.aspx.
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