United Property & Casualty Insurance (UPC) is the tenth property insurance company in Florida to enter receivership in the last three years, indicating that it lacks sufficient funding to pay claims.
As a result, the company was declared insolvent by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) last week.
It’s difficult to imagine anyone wanting to start a property insurance company in Florida, but a new company in Tampa has already become one of the larger providers, taking on nearly 200,000 policies from failing companies.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God… you’re a new company with a once-in-a-lifetime disaster, and are they going to have the reserves to pay for everything?'” Coral Springs When he heard Hurricane Ian was heading for the Central Gulf Coast, homeowner Dave Stevens thought.
St. John’s, his property insurance company, had declared bankruptcy in early 2022, and he was one of the 100,000 policies picked up by Slide.
“I knew there would be mass insolvencies in Florida, so we raised a tremendous amount of capital to really kind of capitalize on market opportunities and provide new solutions to the homeowners who are in need of those solutions,” Bruce Lucas, CEO of Slide Insurance, explained.
Lucas is the former CEO of Heritage Insurance, a publicly traded company with over 150,000 residential policies.
He founded Slide in March, shortly after St John’s went bankrupt. It was one of six companies that declared bankruptcy last year, owing primarily to lawsuit losses.
Stevens considers himself to be one of the fortunate.
“We had a refrigerator full of food for ten days without power, and the smell, you can imagine when you walk in, was incredible… It simply permeated everything “Stevens yelled.
Hurricane Ian damaged his roof, and the odor from his refrigerator destroyed most of his furniture, but Slide replaced it within months.
Many of his neighbors, according to Stevens, are still waiting to hear back from their insurance companies about open claims.
“You can see the roof is completely repaired,” Stevens demonstrated to ABC Action News. “There are a lot of tarps on the roofs down here, and mine is finished now.”
“We were able to respond to losses more quickly, adjust those losses, and pay insurance at an unprecedented rate,” Lucas exclaimed. “We have the highest in-claim closure rate in the state, at around 94%, whereas the state average is in the 70s.”
Slide, according to Lucas, is based on a “data-driven underwriting methodology,” which means they use artificial intelligence and machine-learning techniques to process data and risk in order to make policy decisions.
“It’s a different approach than you might have seen with traditional insurance. So far, it’s working, and we’re optimistic about the future “He went on to say.
According to Lucas, Slide also entered the market knowing that new legislation would be enacted.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation to eliminate fee multipliers and curb runaway litigation after two legislative special sessions on property insurance in 2022.
Slide acquired over 72,000 policies from UPC on February 1, giving another 18,000 policies the option to renew with them.
UPC announced last year that they were leaving the state, but they never made it that far.
Stassy Olmos, an ABC Action News In-Depth Reporter, spoke with the Insurance Information Institute in early February after hearing from homeowners who felt UPC was ignoring their claims. According to OIR spokesperson Mark Friedlander, it was a sign that the company was struggling and that OIR needed to look into it.
“They are stalling on thousands of claims across the state. We’re hearing similar stories from homeowners and insurance agents about the company failing to respond. Do they have or do they not have the funds?” Friedlander yelled.
UPC went into receivership on February 16.
The company did not have enough funding to cover Hurricane Ian losses due to millions of dollars in underwriting losses over the years.
According to OIR data, UPC had approximately 138,000 policies in force when Ian made landfall in September.
“We went through the UPC policies in great detail, and there were a lot of policies that had open damage claims from Hurricane Ian,” Lucas explained. “As a result, our underwriting manual forbids us from accepting those policies.”
According to the OIR referral document, the company did not have enough funding to cover Hurricane Ian losses due to millions of dollars in underwriting losses over the years.
According to OIR data, UPC had approximately 138,000 policies in force when Ian made landfall in September.
“We went through the UPC policies in great detail, and there were a lot of policies that had open damage claims from Hurricane Ian,” Lucas explained. “As a result, our underwriting manual forbids us from accepting those policies.”
We contacted UPC representatives prior to their insolvency but have yet to hear back.
Slide’s books are now open for new business, and Lucas stated that their rates are competitive with the rest of the market.
“I can tell you that we’ve received somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-8,000 quotes from agents just in the first few weeks,” Lucas said. “We have a couple of thousand appointed agents right now, several thousand more agents requesting appointments because there is nowhere else to go, and the legacy Florida carriers will remain closed for some time. So we’re just grateful to be here. We are at the start of the new legislation.”