Final 12 months, Progressive introduced that it will not renew sure householders’ insurance coverage insurance policies in Florida to “rebalance our publicity,” beginning in Might this 12 months. These non-renewal notices have already began arriving.
“Expensive Policyholder, your coverage will expire at 12:01 on July 1, 2024, for the next causes. After cautious consideration we’re unable to give you a renewal coverage because of a discount in our hurricane publicity. Please contact your agent to seek out substitute protection,” the letters learn.
“I used to be shocked, I used to be surprised,” Ira Kasdan informed ABC Motion Information. “There could also be a time the place as a lot as we love Florida we could not have the ability to keep right here.”
The information comes as Residents Insurance coverage, the insurer of final resort for the state that Ron DeSantis (pictured) has referred to as bancrupt, had some excellent news. It reported roughly 1.162 million insurance policies final Friday, a lower from 1.18 million insurance policies the earlier week and 1.175 million insurance policies two weeks prior, based mostly on the information obtainable on the Residents web site.
Final week, six non-public insurance coverage corporations — Slide Insurance coverage Co., Florida Peninsula Insurance coverage Co., Edison Insurance coverage Co., Southern Oak Insurance coverage Co., American Traditions Insurance coverage Co., and Individuals’s Belief Insurance coverage Co. — obtained regulatory approval to take over insurance policies from Residents.
This motion is part of what’s known as a Residents’ “depopulation” program.
Initially established as a security web insurer, Residents has grown to change into the state’s largest property insurer lately. This progress has occurred as non-public insurers have been letting go of consumers and growing charges because of monetary difficulties.
Residents’ coverage rely peaked at roughly 1.412 million within the fall of 2023 however has since seen a lower owing to the depopulation program.
When information broke in regards to the insurer slicing again within the state, an organization spokesperson confirmed the transfer to native information channel WFLA and talked about that Progressive had already initiated the mandatory regulatory filings to enact the change.
The non-renewals primarily impacted DP3 insurance policies, that are normally for second houses, in addition to different “direct and company property insurance policies.”
Whereas the spokesperson didn’t present precise figures, the Insurance coverage Data Institute (Triple-I) projected that about 100,000 policyholders can be affected by the pullback.
This equated to 50% of the insurer’s insurance policies within the state at the moment, in accordance with Triple-I, affecting 47,000 DP3 insurance policies and 53,000 insurance policies for properties deemed as excessive danger.
The Progressive spokesperson said that notices had been despatched out to affected policyholders in December, whereas the primary wave of non-renewals took impact in Might 2024.
“Florida property stays an essential a part of our Progressive Home-based business, and we’ve got no plans to depart the state,” they famous additional. “Nonetheless, we had been working collaboratively with state officers and the Florida Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation to implement modifications that allowed us to rebalance our publicity whereas persevering with to serve Florida householders.”
Progressive’s resolution got here as Florida continued to grapple with a property insurance coverage disaster, pushed partly by the state’s vulnerability to pure disasters and the intensification of maximum climate occasions.
Florida lawmakers had sought to handle these challenges with sweeping property insurance coverage reforms in an try and stabilize the market and encourage insurers to stay within the state. Nonetheless, specialists mentioned it would take a while earlier than the total impression of those modifications was felt.
In 2022, Progressive selected to not renew some 56,000 insurance policies, in accordance with Triple-I.
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