Florida homeowners are breathing easier as Citizens Insurance is no longer the state’s largest home insurance provider, significantly reducing the risk of a costly hurricane tax for people.<\/p>\n
Florida Insurance Market Sees Major Shift: Citizens No Longer #1<\/p>\n
In the months following Hurricane Ian’s devastation, Florida’s insurer of last resort saw its policy count swell to 1.4 million customers, making it vulnerable and prompting a Senate Budget Committee investigation into its finances. Every consumer in the state faced the possibility of being hit with a hurricane tax.<\/p>\n
Now, the situation has dramatically improved. This month, Citizens announced it has shed more than 900,000 policies, bringing its numbers down to what experts consider a manageable level.<\/p>\n
“We’re not concerned about (a hurricane surcharge) now because it’s come down to a very manageable level,” said Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute.<\/p>\n
The reduction has been beneficial for many homeowners. A Citizens spokesperson revealed that in nearly half the cases, homeowners actually saved money when switching to private insurers.<\/p>\n
“About 40% of those policies, these takeout premium was actually less than what the citizens premium was. Consumers are now starting to see more choices in the market,” said Citizens spokesperson Michael Peltier.<\/p>\n
Industry analysts point to legislation passed following Hurricane Ian that cut down on assignment of benefits fraud and litigation as a key factor in the market’s improvement.<\/p>\n
The positive changes are reflected in premium costs. Florida homeowners are averaging just a 1% increase in premiums this year, marking the second consecutive year with the lowest rate changes in the country.<\/p>\n
“We look at data across the country, there’s no other state seeing this type of relief,” Friedlander said.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida homeowners are breathing easier as Citizens Insurance is no longer the state’s largest home insurance provider, significantly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6423,8153,28,30,37571,29,3790,37573,37572],"class_list":["post-62207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-citizens","tag-consumer-news","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-homeowners-insurance","tag-florida-news","tag-hurricane-damage","tag-hurricane-tax","tag-insurance-relief"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}