Citizens expecting to add policies
The state-run insurer of last resort says it is likely to surge above 500,000 homeowners policies.
After years of jettisoning customers, Florida’s last-resort insurer expects to get bigger in 2017 — returning to more than half a million policies.
“We’ve entered a different stage,” Citizens Property Insurance Corp. President Barry Gilway told the company’s board in a meeting Wednesday. “There’s very little interest in depopulation.”
Depopulation is Citizens-speak for helping customers find their way to private insurers, part of the state-run company’s mission. But as Florida’s 11-year hurricane-free streak came to an end in 2016 with Hermine and Matthew, several private companies have blamed inflated non-storm claims as the main reason they are shunning new business, particularly in South Florida.
Now Citizens sees a net gain to its rolls.
A “best estimate” discussed Wednesday puts Citizens at more than 504,000 policies in 2017, up from 472,207 as of Friday. A highend estimate projects more than 577,000 customers.
About one in 10 of its customers lives in Palm Beach County. Citizens remains one of the state’s two largest property insurers.
It’s a significant change from the mass exodus that saw the company shrink from a high near 1.5 million customers in the past four years.
The appetite for new business among private companies is waning, statistics show.
Offers from private carriers approved by regulators to take Citizens customers have dwin- dled to less than 45,000 for January and February, Gilway said.
Avat ar Proper t y and Casualty Insurance Co. (10,899 offers approved), Safepoint Insurance Co. (15,000) and Southern Oak Insurance Co. (15,000) are among the companies making pitches by February, regulators said Wednesday.
That’s well below the hundreds of thousands of offers in a similar period a year ago. Fewer Citizens customers have been taking the offers over the last year.
Citizens officials expect as few as 10,000 will switch by February, and that will likely not exceed the typical flow of new and returning customers in that period.
Company officials repeated calls for state legislators to address what they calls abuses in claims in which contractors, attorneys or other third parties take control of insurance benefits — particularly in cases such as water damage from a plumbing leak. That’s the most common type of non-catastrophe claim, and industry officials say the worst abuses have been in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, though Palm Beach County is often lumped into the discussion.
For their part, contractors and attorneys have argued insurance companies are crying wolf and trying to low-ball consumers or curtail their rights to representation.
There also may be room for Florida’s relatively small and unproven private companies to become more competitive, not just on price but also on service. A Citizens official read a letter Wednesday from a customer grateful for the company’s prompt response to hurricane damage, compared to neighbors unable to make contact quickly with private competitors. The consumer referred to a car insurance commercial where a customer says, “Maybe you have the wrong insurance company.”