Florida's Citizen's Property Insurance Rates To Drop

Categories: Florida

Florida's Citizen's Property Insurance Rates To Drop

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (FLOIR) announced last week that it has lowered the 2015 rates for Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (Citizens), Florida’s largest property insurer. Overall, the statewide average homeowners rate will fall 3.7% compared to the 3.4% decrease requested by Citizens.

The effective date for both new and renewal rates within the Personal Lines Account and Coastal Account is February 1, 2015.

FLOIR also approved last week the removal of up to 425,357 personal residential policies and 2,227 commercial residential polices from Citizens

as part of the state’s ongoing effort to reduce the number of policies in Citizens and transfer them to the private insurance market.

Citizen’s Personal Lines and Commercial Lines Accounts are mostly non-coastal properties and the Coastal Account are coastal properties. The take-out periods are November 18, 2014 for personal residential impacting both the PLA/CA policies and November 4, 2014 for commercial residential impacting both the CLA/CA policies.

Last week’s announcement brings the total number of policies approved for take-outs this year to 894,156 and the actual number of policies removed from Citizens as of August 30 to 124,995. By statute, policyholders may choose to remain covered by Citizens; however, they may be at risk of higher assessments, FLOIR warned.