Florida's Hurricane Catastrophe Fund will sell additional bondsto repay higher than expected claims costs resulting from 2005'sHurricane Wilma, officials said.

The additional bonds will raise $625 million for the fund,according to Dennis MacKee, a spokesman for the Florida State Boardof Administration that oversees the Catastrophe Fund. "We hope toissue the bonds some time in July," he said.

Mr. MacKee said the need to sell additional bonds does notsignal any problems with the fund's current financial picture orability to pay claims as the fund works on a post-event system tocover its losses.

The SBA, he said, has already issued $1.35 billion in bonds forclaims relating to the 2005 hurricane and sought to sell additionalbonds to cover any remaining or reopened claims.

Bonds that have already been issued are being funded by a 1percent surcharge on policies sold in the state that had been setto expire in 2012.

Those surcharges are applied to car, boat, home and businessinsurance coverage. Mr. MacKee said that to pay for the additionalbonds, the surcharge would now remain in effect until 2014.

Sam Miller, a spokesman for the Florida Insurance Council,agreed that the bonds were related solely to past expense.

"This is about clearing up the 2004-2005 seasons," he said, "andprobably primarily about Hurricane Wilma." Hurricane Wilma causedmore than $10 billion in insured losses, according to the InsuranceServices Office Inc.

Mr. Miller said that one of the reasons claims have outpacedreserves is a rise in public adjusters "aggressively advertising"their services to homeowners as a means to collect more money frominsurers. "That's a lot of it," he said.

Even when claims that involve public adjusters fail to hold upas legitimate, insurers must still pay to investigate and performtheir due diligence, said Mr. Miller.

Even though such claims would raise a number ofquestions--particularly those that are reopened after a homeownerhas accepted a settlement--an insurer can't unilaterally deny them,"or you're going to get sued," he explained.