Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty has issued a notice of intent to deny a request by Nationwide Insurance Company of Florida to increase residential property insurance rates by a statewide average of 71.5 percent.
Nationwide filed the new rates on July 6 to become effective for new and renewal business November 10, 2006. The primary reason the company cited for the increase was higher reinsurance costs for non-Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund reinsurance. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation found there was not sufficient support in the filing to justify the request.
“Many Floridians are being forced to make painful economic choices to deal with rising insurance premiums,” McCarty said. “In such an environment insurers must redouble efforts to fully and completely support all requests for increased rates, and that has absolutely not been done in this case. The filing contains proposed hurricane rate hikes in excess of 300 and 400 percent for some territories which are entirely unsustainable.”
Nationwide has 253,000 policies statewide in Florida. The five counties with the greatest number of policyholders are Palm Beach with 29,177, Pinellas with 21,558, Orange with 16,298, Hillsborough with 14,307, and Broward with 13,459.
Source: www.floir.com
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