Citizens attributes its steady drop in policies to its Depopulation Program.
Citizens Property Insurance dropped nearly 200,000 policies to end October. This means Florida’s insurer of last resort has finally fallen from its status as the state’s largest property insurer.
Citizens’ property insurance policy count peaked in September 2023, at around 1.4 million. As of October 31, Citizens reportedly had 569,495 policies in force, marking its lowest policy count since early 2021.
Citizens attributes its steady drop in policies to its Depopulation Program. This program, which is required by Florida law, matches Citizens policyholders with insurance carriers in the private market. All of the private companies who have taken on Citizens’ policies have been approved by Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation.
In the depopulation process, private insurers are able to select the property policies for which they would like to assume coverage. Florida law states that policyholders with Citizens who receive an offer of coverage from a private insurer that is no more than 20% greater than Citizens’ estimated renewal premium are rendered ineligible for renewal under the insurer of last resort.
This means that policyholders pushed to the private market may face increases to already high insurance rates.
Policies depopulated during the last week of October were reportedly assumed by a variety of private insurers, including Slide Insurance assuming 60,186 policies; Manatee Insurance Exchange assuming 50,822; Homeowners Choice Property & Casualty Insurance assuming 19,466; Tailrow Insurance Exchange assuming 19,199; and Mangrove Property Insurance assuming 15,691.
In June, Citizens President/CEO and Executive Director Tim Cerio delivered an address to the insurer’s Board of Governors in which he declared the state’s long-struggling property insurance market was well into recovery. At that time, Cerio reported that over the previous 12 months, Citizens’ exposure fell by 43%, from $520.1 billion to $295.1 billion.
“It is simply irrefutable that reforms championed by the Governor and passed by the Legislature have had a tremendous impact on improving this market,” Cerio said in a release. “The data bears this out.”
The largest property insurers in Florida are now reportedly Universal Property & Casualty Insurance with 561,546 policies reported in-force at the end of September, and State Farm Florida Insurance with a reported 646,429 policies in force at the end of August.
Historically, a drop in the number of policies in force with a state’s insurer of last resort has been indicative of an improving market.
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