Plus, a call for more help for insurance consumers
Citizens Property Insurance begins the New Year in better shape and with a lower policy count than expected, thanks in part to depopulation and the organization’s leadership whose focus is to continue to shrink policy count; something old is becoming something new in consumer services from the Florida Department of Financial Services; plus a growing property insurance company is bringing $1 billion-plus of capital to the Florida marketplace. It’s all in this week’s Property Insurance News.
Citizens Improving: The December Board of Governors meeting of Citizens Property Insurance included many positive pieces of news. Combining Citizens’ three accounts into one will make it much less likely that Citizens policyholders will face a future surcharge and even more unlikely that non-Citizen policyholders will face an emergency assessment from a future catastrophe. Its reinsurance plans for 2024 include an expected $700 million reinsurance purchase and ceding $498 million of premium for coverage from the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund. Over the past year, Citizen’s policy count has grown 177%, its exposure has increased five times over and its premium revenue increased seven-fold – an impact softened by the Citizens Depopulation Program in 2023, which transitioned 223,307 policyholders to private insurers. As a result, Citizens ended 2023 with a policy count of 1.22 million and $551 billion in total exposure, below the projected 1.7 million policies and $675 billion in total exposure. Regulators have just approved another 47,000 policies for takeout to the private market in March. However, Citizens’ commercial lines business is now its area of highest growth and its biggest risk challenge. Total Insured Value has grown from $25 billion in October 2022 to $103.1 billion in October 2023 along with a building count that nearly tripled from 16,143 to 47,439 in the same period.
A DFS Representative at an Insurance Village, November 2019
History Repeats Itself: In the old days, during previous CFOs and even up to the early 2000’s, the Department of Financial Services (DFS) had field offices to put its consumer services staff in closer touch with Floridians, until a certain CFO closed them. It appears DFS is looking to reestablish closer touch with insurance consumers, as CFO Jimmy Patronis calls to expand what he dubbed one of the state’s best-kept secrets: The Division of Consumer Services. Patronis has asked the Florida Legislature for $5.5 million to increase the size of the division, allowing it to provide more face-to-face insurance needs across the board. The specific request is to open two new regional offices where Floridians can be helped through disputes, complaints, and mediations without an attorney or public adjuster present. It’s something Patronis says will help with the 70,000+ phone calls the division received last year and the influx of more than 1,200 new Floridians to the state per day. These newly staffed offices would be able to provide valuable information and assistance with paperwork, estimates, or just provide a general timeline of the claim.
New Acquisition: The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation has approved the acquisition of Florida domestic property and casualty reciprocal insurer, Trusted Resource Underwriters Exchange, to allow the existing company to grow its footprint in the state and expand its underwriting capacity. As a result of the acquisition, more than $1.25 billion of capital is being invested into Florida’s property and casualty insurance market..
LMA Newsletter of 1-8-24
