Citizens Property Insurance officials are touting their efforts to decrease the company’s size, in an effort to return it to its original purpose of being Florida’s insurer of last resort. The Office of Insurance Regulation has given the okay to move about 400-thousand Citizens Insurance policies to private insurance companies.
Unless they object, about 400-thousand Citizens Property Insurance Policy holders could soon have a new private insurance company. Barry Gilway is the President of Citizens Property Insurance.
“Companies identify the insureds they’re interested in assuming. Then we notify those insureds and it is a negative response required in order to get themselves excluded from the opt out,” Gilway said.
That means Citizens only gets people off its rolls if they don’t pay attention to the warning they’re about to get in the mail or they think the new insurers are superior. Gilway said Citizens policy holders will be happy with the move. He said private insurers could offer more coverage, and would reduce the risk of an assessment a person would face in the case of a major storm.
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