Florida Approves Removal of Up to 142,500 Policies from Citizens

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation approved the removal of up to 140,000 personal residential policies and 2,500 commercial residential polices from Citizens Property Insurance Corp. by the following four companies:

• Anchor Property & Casualty Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 20,000 personal residential policies (15,951 Personal Lines Account and 4,049 Coastal Account)
• Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 55,000 personal residential policies (39,800 Personal Lines Account and 15,200 Coastal Account) and up to 1,500 commercial residential policies (1,300 Commercial Lines Account and 200 Coastal Account)
• Olympus Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 10,000 personal residential policies (7,917 Personal Lines Account and 2,083 Coastal Account)
• United Property & Casualty Insurance Co. – approved to remove up to 55,000 personal residential policies (19,800 Personal Lines Account and 35,200 Coastal Account) and up to 1,000 commercial residential policies (940 Commercial Lines Account and 60 Coastal Account)

Citizen’s Personal Lines and Commercial Lines Accounts are mostly non-coastal properties and the Coastal Account is coastal properties. The take-out periods are December 22, 2015 for personal residential impacting both the Personal Lines/Coastal Account policies and December 15, 2015 for commercial residential impacting both the Commercial Lines/Coastal Account policies. This is part of the state’s ongoing depopulation effort to reduce the number of policies in the state-created Citizens and transfer them to the private insurance market.

The Oct. 8 announcement brings the total number of policies approved for take-outs in 2015 to 1,321,193.

By statute, policyholders may choose to remain covered by Citizens during take-out offers.