Foremost Called To Defend Fla. Increase

The Foremost group, a mobile home specialty insurer operating within the Farmers Insurance Group, is the latest insurer to be called before the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation to defend its proposed rate increases.

According to the insurance department, Foremost and its affiliates, including American Federation Insurance Co., Foremost Property and Casualty Insurance Co., Foremost Insurance Co. and Foremost Signature Insurance Co., requested rate increases of as much as 72.9 percent for properties in Polk County. The insurer, the department said, have over 20,000 policyholders in the county, comprising 68 percent of the market.

However, a spokesman for Los Angeles-based Farmers, Mark Toohey, disputed those figures, saying the company's rate requests "were not accurately described by the department" in its announcement of the hearing.

In Polk County, he said that Foremost only has a market share of 31.5 percent and is seeking an county-wide average of 19.7 percent. In fact, he noted that the average rate increase the company is requesting on a statewide basis is greater, at 22 percent.

Foremost, according to Mr. Toohey, has 100,438 mobile home policies in Florida, which he estimated makes the company the largest private insurer of mobile homes in the state.

"We're probably the only one still writing mobile home insurance," he added.

The company has been active in Florida since the 1950s, and Mr. Toohey claimed that the proposed rate increases were necessary given the company's exposure.

"It's catastrophe exposure," he said. In fact, he added that Foremost did not make any profits in Florida during the fourteen year period between 1993 and 2007.

"Some years maybe we did," he said, "but most years we didn't."

The hearing on Foremost's rate requests are scheduled to take place tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. at the city hall in Lakeland, Fla.