More Policies Targeted For Shift Out Of Citizens Insurance

September 21, 2015

The state continues to squeeze policies out of Citizens Property Insurance Corp. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation announced Thursday that up to 184,500 Citizens policies will be made available in November to six private insurance carriers through what is known as the “takeout” process.

A total of 181,909 personal-residential policies and 2,591 commercial-residential policies will be offered to Anchor Property & Casualty, Heritage Property & Casualty, Safepoint Insurance, United Property & Casualty Insurance, Weston Insurance and Southern Oak Insurance.

Not counting “takeouts” set for late October and November, the state had made 713,336 Citizens policies available through the process this year. Policies that are not moved into the private market in any “takeout” period are often offered again.

So far, 141,647 policies have been removed. Of those, at least 34,000 policies are in areas considered coastal, said Citizens spokesman Michael Peltier. A reason for the overall low turnover is that private insurers typically select the least-risky policies to remove from the state-backed Citizens.

Also, policyholders are allowed to reject takeout offers.

Citizens had 598,456 policies as of July 31. The overall Citizens policy count is a considerable drop from a high of 1.5 million policies in 2012, when Gov. Rick Scott pushed to scale back the agency by putting more homeowners into private coverage.

Comments

2 Responses to “More Policies Targeted For Shift Out Of Citizens Insurance”

  1. c.w. on September 21st, 2015 9:37 am

    Citizens insurance co. never should have been forced on the people. It has “forced” everyone that has insurance no matter if it’s homeowners or auto to help pay for the few to live where they shouldn’t. Sounds a lot like communism to me.

  2. Jason on September 21st, 2015 1:06 am

    Every citizen in the State of Florida who purchases insurance pays a subsidy to offset cost associated with the operations for “Citizens Property Insurance”. The use of “Citizens Property Insurance” is for those who were unable to obtain insurance from a private vendor. When a “private vendor” offers a policy to those current customers of “Citizens Property Insurance” and these customers reject the newly offered policy, then these customers should no longer get subsidized rates from Citizens Property Insurance” as “Citizens Property Insurance” is no longer a “last resort option”.

    Many of those policy being maintained by the State are considered “risky” properties. I shouldnt be required to continue to subsidize those who opt to either build or rebuild in “risky” areas. If you can afford waterfront or other “risky areas” you should be able to afford your own insurance.

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News