05/05/2025
Tens of thousands of Florida homeowners are receiving offers to switch from the state's insurer of last resort to private companies, as regulators' efforts to depopulate Citizens and stabilize the Sunshine State's property insurance market continue.
The takeout offers, which involve more than 130,000 homeowners, are for three private companies—Slide, Patriot and Mangrove. Newsweek contacted the press teams of these three insurers for comment by email on Tuesday morning, outside of standard working hours.
Why It Matters
Florida has just started recovering from a yearslong crisis that has seen home insurance premiums skyrocketing due to a combination of widespread fraud, excessive litigation, and the increased risk posed by natural disasters, made more frequent and more severe by climate change.
Between 2019 and 2023, the average homeowner premium in the Sunshine State surged by nearly 60 percent, Reuters reported, as several major insurers reduced coverage in the most-vulnerable parts of the state or withdrew from it entirely.
The lack of affordable options on the market forced thousands of homeowners to join the ranks of Citizens, which ballooned in size to reach a record of 1.4 million policies in 2023. The sudden growth of the state-backed insurer of last resort caused concern among regulators and lawmakers, who ordered Citizens to lower its total policy count out of fear that all Floridians would risk having to bail out the company.
Should the state be hit by a disastrous extreme weather event, for example, all Florida homeowners could face extra charges to cover for Citizens if the insurer were not to have enough money to cover claims.
What To Know
Since 2023, Citizens has successfully transferred thousands of policyholders to private companies in a process known as "depopulation." Currently, Florida's insurer of last resort has 850,000 policies—its lowest total in nearly three years.
This number is expected to continue dropping as more private companies are allowed by state regulators to take over Citizens' policies. Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky signed three orders allowing Slide, Patriot, and Mangrove to assume as many as 135,540 policies from the state's insurer of last resort.
February assumption figures show that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) gave approval for companies to assume 342,918 policies from Citizens, and 209,164 offers went out. By the end of the process, 102,083 policies were assumed by the takeout companies.
That suggests that not as many policies as approved by OIR will actually be assumed by private companies.