The head of Florida Citizens Property Insurance Corp. says the state-run insurer is well on its way to becoming the true market of last resort for the Sunshine State.

"We've never been in better shape," says Citizens CEO Barry Gilway. "I think the numbers speak for themselves."

About a year ago Gilway took the helm of the troubled insurer, which was bursting at the seams with too much exposure and too much chaos within—misappropriations and employees basically running amok.

"I was told one thing: "Get this company smaller,'" Gilway tells NU. "I wanted to do it in a way that was beneficial to policyholders."

And by "policyholders," Gilway refers to insureds at Citizens and elsewhere, because everyone is exposed to assessments if Citizens can't pay claims.

Gilway's ideas aren't without controversy—and some initial attempts to dissuade property owners from joining Citizens haven't worked as well as anyone would like. Citizens routinely finds itself in Florida headlines and the tone is often unfavorable. But under Gilway's leadership, Citizens' policy count has shrunk—in a more permanent way than previous efforts to depopulate the insurer, he says—and one of his ideas adopted into law could have an even more dramatic effect.

With about 1.26 million policies, Citizens remains the largest provider of property insurance in Florida—a designation it was never intended to hold.

Citizens hasn't stopped traditional depopulation efforts by "take-out" companies but after the pace slowed, Gilway and his team looked to other means—inking more complex deals with Weston and Heritage insurance companies to remove more exposure from the books.

"We've tried to think outside the box but it has been difficult to get others to understand the issues, and the facts and figures," Gilway says, while simultaneously conceding some of the blame for not communicating well enough with state leaders.

Gilway wrote a letter to the state Board of Governors guaranteeing better communication and tighter policies at Citizens to rein in spending.

"Any concept outside the standard depopulation program will be presented in public, where anyone can vet the agreement," he says of the future. "We will communicate during the process."

Still, the CEO asserts Citizens "took no shortcuts," and "didn't rush" any recent deals meant to get policies back into the private market.

When scheduled take-outs are completed by the end of the summer, Citizens could be 430,000 policies lighter. The insurer's probable maximum loss for a 1-in-100-year storm dropped 15 percent to $19.9 billion over the last year.

Most importantly, for all Floridians, the potential emergency assessment to be levied on all policyholders is now $3.8 billion—down dramatically from $7.3 billion a year ago.

And looking ahead, Gilway says the best may still be coming. As part of SB 1770, signed late May into law by Gov. Rick Scott, a clearinghouse will be established with the intent to reduce the number of policies even further by assuring risk gets shopped in the private market before finding a home in the market of last resort.The clearinghouse allows new and renewed policies to be offered to private insurers before landing at Citizens. A comparative rate analysis will be generated.

"It's a win-win-win," Gilway says, referring to the expectation of Citizens losing policies, property owners obtaining better coverage in the private markets, and agents scoring greater distribution.

"It will be a complex program to implement," he says, adding that about 52 percent of Citizens' business comes from direct writers.

"At least a third of new business could be eliminated through this mechanism," he explains. "With renewals—we have 186,000 State Farm policies (shed by the insurer in 2010 as part of a deal to stay in the state) and they will be shopped. I believe two-thirds could land outside of Citizens."

Special Reports /

Florida Citizens CEO: ‘We’ve Never Been in Better Shape’

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