Florida OIR Approves Removal of Up to 427,584 Policies From Citizens

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) announced that it has approved the removal of up to 425,357 personal residential policies and 2,227 commercial residential policies from Citizens Property Insurance Corp. by 14 companies.

The OIR said Thursday this is part of the state’s ongoing effort to reduce the number of policies in Citizens and transfer them to the private insurance market.

The OIR’s latest announcement brings the total number of policies approved for takeouts this year to 894,156 and the actual number of policies removed from Citizens as of Aug. 30 of 2014 to 124,995. By statute, policyholders may choose to remain covered by Citizens; however, they may be at risk of higher assessments, the OIR said.

Florida OIR spokesman Harvey Bennett told Insurance Journal that this is the largest single removal approved in at least three years. According to the latest data publicly available, as of March 31, 2014, Citizens had 917,684 policies in force.

The approved 14 insurers in the latest take-out round are as follows:

• American Integrity Insurance Co. of Florida – approved to remove up to 15,000 personal residential policies (14,637 Personal Lines Account (PLA)/363 Coastal Account (CA))
• Avatar Property & Casualty Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 10,000 personal residential PLA policies
• Capitol Preferred Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 30,000 personal residential PLA policies
• Elements Property Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 60,000 personal residential policies (54,000 PLA/6,000 CA)
• Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 70,000 personal residential policies (62,500 PLA/7,500 CA) and up to 200 commercial residential Commercial Lines Account (CLA) policies
• Mount Beacon Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 47,900 personal residential PLA policies
• Olympus Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 30,000 personal residential policies (23,379 PLA/6,621 CA)
• Safepoint Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 18,000 personal residential policies (15,000 PLA/3,000 CA)
• Southern Fidelity Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 30,000 personal residential PLA policies
• Southern Fidelity Property & Casualty Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 30,000 personal residential PLA policies
• Southern Oak Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 10,000 personal residential policies (8,500 PLA/1,500 CA)
• Tower Hill Signature Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 6,164 personal residential policies (4,931 PLA/1,233 CA)
• United Property & Casualty Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 51,293 personal residential policies (42,573 PLA/8,720 CA) and up to 2,027 commercial residential policies (1,824 CLA/203 CA)
• Universal Insurance Co. of North America – approved to remove up to 17,000 personal residential PLA policies

Citizen’s Personal Lines Accounts (PLA) and Commercial Lines Accounts (CLA) are mostly non-coastal properties and the Coastal Account (CA) are coastal properties. The takeout periods are Nov. 18, 2014 for personal residential impacting both the PLA/CA policies and Nov. 4, 2014 for commercial residential impacting both the CLA/CA policies. Policyholders have 30 days prior to and following the assumption date to complete the opt-out process, should they choose to do so, the OIR said.

Source: The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation