3 Florida Insurers to Drop Thousands of Policies, Make Moves to Stay Afloat

By | May 12, 2021

  • May 12, 2021 at 8:30 am
    Mr. Solvent says:
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    “OIR’s priority is to ensure consumers have access to coverage and will make every effort to help consumers find replacement coverage,”

    If this were true then every single one of these policies would have a home with another carrier or Citizens without any intervention by the client or agent.

    • May 12, 2021 at 10:35 am
      Logic Prevails says:
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      What you fail to understand is that the renewal rights of these policies belong to the agent. They can’t be moved without agent involvement.

      • May 12, 2021 at 1:44 pm
        Mr. Solvent says:
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        Maybe you missed the failure of Florida Specialty most recently but Sunshine State, Magnolia, and others previously that had an easy path without disturbing ownership.

        • May 18, 2021 at 8:07 pm
          Pinellas County says:
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          We were dropped from Heritage this week, teh explanation was “Agent no longer represents Heritage Insurance “. When I called, Agent said Heritage dropped the agent and 200 other agents, Our agent asked (in our case) why not cherry pick because we are lower risk, they said no, all 220 agents lose all policy holders, Pinellas was one of the counties Heritage said was too high a risk. Our roof is over 10 years old, agent is saying nobody wans the policy because of the roof now (We have no claims and are low risk) , this seems illegal

          • May 19, 2021 at 10:57 am
            CL PM says:
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            Why should it be illegal for a private, for profit company like Heritage to make decisions on how they can best make a profit and protect their assets so they can continue to pay claims? Don’t know what you do for a living, but if your company was losing money, is your management allowed to make decisions to save the company or should that also be illegal? Help me understand what I am missing.

          • May 19, 2021 at 1:01 pm
            Pinellas County says:
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            CL PM – actually, I am in insurance and I deeply understand how actuarial accounting works, just medical and yes, even when losing we are not allowed to shuck members off (Federal and State), they are contracts. We can choose to leave the entire state at the end of the contract or divest the business but not selectively prune. These home owners insurance companies are government backed and funded so there are and should be constraints and selectively pruning should not be allowed. Jack the rates up to meet actuarial numbers . If they dont want any government funding, subsidies or tax payer bailouts, I agree, move on.

    • May 12, 2021 at 10:44 am
      Tiger88 says:
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      Well Sovent old boy, they said this in 2007-08 when Poe Financial (followed by several others) collapsed. But they did not do the things necessary to make the transition happen from the bankrupt companies to Citizens or anywhere else. So we agents spent countless nights and weekends rewriting, mailing, e-mailing, calling out and replacing policies.

      I suspect the same thing is going to happen with our HO business, many companies will drop out, be consolidated or merged and hundreds of thousands of policies will be cast aside. We will literally be on our own to figure it out. The difference between the last collapse and this on is that Citizens is a much more difficult and unfriendly environment.

      • May 12, 2021 at 4:13 pm
        SWFL Agent says:
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        Yes, Citizens is much less friendly now. If I remember correctly, Citizens had a shortened process to move the Poe policies and it made it easier.

        • May 13, 2021 at 9:10 am
          Mr. Solvent says:
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          It was VERY shortened. Poe policies moved to Citizens automatically. Many of us agents spent countless hours trying to re-write the policies, true…but those that we couldn’t went without action on our part.

          I’d settle for the same process as Florida Specialty…an application ready to go, just hit bind.

          I think people here don’t realize I’ve been in this market 23 years.

          • May 13, 2021 at 4:02 pm
            okt0ber says:
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            About the same amount of time I’ve been in the Texas market. Every time I see one of these Florida companies come into Texas thinking they’re going to write up North Texas to escape the hurricane exposure, I just grin when the hail storms come through once a week from March through June. They last a few years, double rates, and then decide they don’t want to write in Dallas anymore.

    • June 15, 2021 at 11:55 pm
      My Two Cents says:
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      Agree with Mr. Solvent! We get notoified with 8 days lef on current Policy. But our Agent was notified in Januaryl
      He failed to check with us to see if we had taken steps on our own to get more insurance from another agency. I would assume our ‘agent’ does not care whether we stay with him or not? He also managed to mention that Roof Inspections are only good for 5 years even though the inspection done last time said there was plenty of life remaining on our roof during his inspection and we have never filed a claim.

  • May 17, 2021 at 9:53 am
    Easy Year says:
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    These insurers are lying. $1.7 billion spread across all insurers is a drop in the bucket. They are not setting aside enough of their own money to stay solvent. This is the fault of OIR. Stop letting the companies deplete their bottom line… or require them to charge more.

    Maybe if the homeowners who abuse their policies are forced to pay more, they’d think twice before doing so. Right now, legislators are too afraid to let rates increase for the fraud their constituents commit.

    • May 17, 2021 at 1:23 pm
      Mike says:
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      It takes scummy insurance agents and adjusters to allow the fraud to run rampant. These dirtbag companies need to set aside more money just like you said, plain and simple.

    • May 18, 2021 at 1:01 pm
      SWFL Agent says:
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      Well, which is it Easy Year? Either it’s a “drop in the bucket” or they need to “charge more”.

  • May 24, 2021 at 10:19 am
    Jack says:
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    You can fix a lot of this by simply going to a depreciated loss settlement on roofs. Every company and state do it at the same time. Pick a date and get on with it. Some people treat their homeowners policy like a health insurance policy, for maintenance. IT”S NOT for that and this is what happens when you think it is.

    On another note- we agents work on commission, baby needs new shoes or a boat :).



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