Louisiana Citizens Insurance Begins Transferring Homeowners Policies

The Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-sponsored insurer of last resort, will be nearly its pre-Hurricane Katrina size after responsibility for 30,000 homeowner policies is transferred to private insurers.

John Wortman, chief executive of Citizens, said the group plans to offer another round of bidding for private companies to take over policies in Citizens.

“We had hoped to take as many as 35,000 policies out in the first year, and I think we’re going to beat that, so I’m pretty pleased,” Wortman said.

Companies were required to submit lists detailing which policies insurance agents had agreed to release to them, subject to permission from individual homeowners.

Companies had requested to take over 34,900 policies, but Citizens discovered instances where multiple companies had bid for the same policy, reducing the number to about 30,000 policies.

Citizens has about 160,000 policies right now, so the effort should bring Citizens close to its 125,000 pre-Katrina policies.

There had been concern that the program would fall short of its goals because many insurance agents had said they did not feel comfortable moving their Citizens policies to private companies without enough information about their rates and policies.

Louisiana has an unusual state law that gives insurance agents the renewal rights to policies they have booked.

Homeowners can expect to get letters in the coming weeks asking them to sign off on the switch.