In the wake of the recent agreement between State Farm Florida and the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, NAIFA-Florida saw opportunity: Bring together State Farm Florida agents and the "unaffiliated insurers" approved to write the 125,000 policies that the carrier will be allowed to non-renew under the consent order with OIR.

To that end, it hosted a meet-and-greet in early February with 14 P&C companies and over 200 State Farm Florida agents and staff. The daylong expo, held at the Hyatt Hotel in Sarasota, featured booths manned by the carriers, refreshments, and an informal atmosphere designed for conversation and connection.

"We drew over 200 agents and/or their staff members from across the state," reported NAIFA-Florida's Communications & Political Affairs Director Bob Lotane. "The Expo had the dual purpose of helping the agents learn about these companies that are new to them without having to research them, and it offered a venue to talk with over a dozen companies one-on-one all in a single day — a 'one-stop-shop,' so to speak. We also saw it as a way to give the policyholders a better chance of staying in the private market and not ending up in Citizens and swelling that already too-high exposure. Both the carriers and the attending agents gave us great reviews on the Expo, and I think it went very well considering we only had a little over two weeks to put it together."