It’s supposed to be the insurer of last resort, but they’ve picked up more than a million policies consisting of people who typically can’t get insurance elsewhere.
Citizen’s insurance has swelled to 1.3 million customers and was never intended to hold that many policies.
Slide Insurance has agreed to step in and take 25,000 of those policies. Loggerhead will take 1,000 policies.
While it could end up costing policyholders more, even Governor Ron DeSantis has said it’s necessary.
DeSantis said in March during a trip to Fort Myers that Citizens has not been solvent.
“If you did have a major, major hurricane hit with a lot of Citizens property holders it would not have enough to pay out,” DeSantis stated.
According to a consent order for SLIDE, Citizen plans to shed 26,000 policies in total.
Insurance Agent Reid McDaniel with McDaniel Insurance Solutions of North Fort Myers pointed out that Citizens has depopulated in the past and predicts they will have to continue to decrease the number of policies they have.
State Law
A new state law signed by the governor would allow companies to charge up to 20% more than Citizens.
“So maybe they might have a slight increase on their homeowners, but now they don’t have to carry flood insurance so it could really be a benefit to them,” McDaniel explained.
Citizens is requiring all policyholders to eventually get flood insurance, something they may not need with a private insurer.
“It could be a silver lining for those people,” McDaniel predicted.
Florida’s Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky called the move to depopulate a good sign
“It’s a sign of a healthy market when there are private carriers that are available to depopulate citizens,” Yaworsky stated.
Notices are expected to go out soon but no word on how much more it may cost policyholders.
“You could have some sort of rate hike or you could have no rate hike. It will entirely depend on what the individual policy looks like,” Yaworsky said.
Citizens policyholders should closely monitor their mailboxes for warnings of change.