Florida-headquartered HCI Group has assumed some 53,000 policies from Citizens, which serves as the state’s insurer of last resort.
Homeowners Choice Property & Casualty Insurance Company, the group’s largest subsidiary, was approved by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation to pick up 75,000 policies. It made a total of 72,958 offers and assumed 53,750 policies, representing a 74% acceptance rate.
Paresh Patel, HCI’s chairman and CEO, said the company made offers for policies that “were previously identified by our technology as attractive policies for assumption.”
He also remarked on the “strong acceptance rate,” attributing it to the fact that Homeowners Choice offered policyholders “a competitively priced renewal policy and expanded coverage compared with their existing Citizens policy.”
The Citizens policies assumed by Homeowners Choice amount to roughly $196 million of in-force premium, according to a news release from HCI.
In an interview with the Sun Sentinel, Patel added that most of these policies are in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. They include 13,000 homeowner policies, 13,000 condo-owner policies and 8,000 dwelling/fire policies.
Another HCI subsidiary is set to pick up more policies from Citizens in the coming months. TypTap Insurance Company will be assuming the policies in December 2023 and January 2024, as noted in HCI’s release.
Citizens has been looking to shed policies amid mounting pressures in Florida’s property insurance market. It currently holds over a million policies and has a market share of around 18% despite being established as an insurer of last resort.
In August, it was announced that Slide Insurance was approved to take on as many as 100,000 policies from Citizens.
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