Citizens has revised proposed rate increases after the Office of Insurance Regulation expressed issues with earlier rate proposals and ordered reductions. Last week Citizens submitted a proposal to their board that could lead to an average 11.5% increase for homeowners with multi-peril policies. Factoring in other policy types like personal line policies that include wind-only and mobile-home policies, the average increase is 12.3%. Commercial policies such as condominium associations are expected to see average increases of 10.2%. 

Personal line increases will take effect December 16 and commercial increases will take effect November 20^th if a final sign off is given by the Office of Insurance Regulation after the proposal is given approval by the board at Citizens. Increases are coming as Citizens sees massive new amounts of policies. Citizens was created to be an insurer of last resort but has ballooned to 1.387 million policies in the last week. Private insurers have begun dropping customers and raising rates. Citizens often charges much lower rates than private insurers and enables customers to continue buying coverage from Citizens who could be depleted of funds if a natural disaster strikes again. Some policyholders may not see any increases, and under laws that passed last year rates could increase for homes by up to 50% if they are not considered primary residences.

Earlier this month, regulators approved seven private insurers to pull as many as 202,000 policies from Citizens. Each company was approved to assume up to a certain number of policies as follows:

Homeowners Choice – assumes up to 75,000 policies

Slide - assumes up to 50,000 policies

Florida Peninsula - assumes up to 30,000 policies

Monarch National - assumes up to 20,399 policies

Safepoint - assumes up to 16,000 policies

Loggerhead – assumes up to 6,000 policies

Edison – assumes up to 5,000 policies

The insurers will be able to choose which policies they want, and homeowners could be forced to pay more for coverage. Citizens customers must accept offers of coverage from private insurers if the offers are within 20% of the cost of Citizens premiums as per a change approved in December by lawmakers and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.