State backed Citizens Property Insurance is getting sued into oblivion

by | Jun 17, 2022



The state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. was served with 3,881 lawsuits during the first four months of 2022, as its number of customers continued soaring. The average of 970 lawsuits a month was about 11.5 percent more than the average of 870 lawsuits a month during the same period in 2021, according to a report prepared for a meeting next week of the Claims Committee of the Citizens Board of Governors.

The insurer also had 18,455 pending lawsuits as of April 30.

“Citizens continues to experience an increasing trend in new, incoming lawsuits primarily attributable to the increasing number of policies in force,” an executive summary of the report said. “This is also impacting the pending volume as we continued to work through the backlog in pending (cases) created by the effects of the prior COVID response by the state court system with the temporary suspension of court hearings/trials.”

The total during the first four months of 2022 included 3,832 lawsuits involving residential properties. Of that number, 2,880 lawsuits were from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to the report.

Lawmakers during a special legislative session last month took steps aimed at reducing litigation costs in the troubled property-insurance system. The number of policies in Citizens has grown by thousands a week as private insurers have dropped customers and sought hefty rate hikes because of financial losses.

As of May 31, Citizens had 883,333 policies.

8 Comments

  1. K Norton

    When Citizens has gone under than these people will have to get rid of their properties or find other insurance.

    • fctfla

      Only required too have insurance on your home if you have a loan on it. You can go without it if you don’t have a loan but not a good idea.

  2. Arthro

    Almost every company in Florida is in financial turmoil with the exception of State Farm, and maybe 1-2 other Florida domestic insurers (ASI, maybe one more). Citizens has $6Billion in surplus, but their liabilities are huge and growing exponentially every day and they were only able to place 36% of their reinsurance needs this year. At least they can impose a “tax” to raise revenue, but the scary thing is that all of these other Florida domestic insurers are one big storm away from bankruptcy. If you are not with State Farm or Citizens, a big storm should have you very concerned.

    • Anonymous

      State Farm doesn’t homeowners Ins in Florida and for there auto they have different stacked UM standards

      • Anonymous

        State Farm does indeed have policies in Florida for homeowners, just not that many. I know because I have claims with SF

  3. JC

    Is anyone going to ask how many claims were denied or underpaid in relation to this increase in litigation? Hard to not get sued if your middle name is “denied” and your price lists are three months behind rapidly inflating costs. Odd how none of that’s ever mentioned for these carriers with numerous caps, exclusions and who can control claims with their managed repair endorsements. I’m excited with the new legislation to, hopefully, see more clearly into insurance carriers financials to determine what’s really the key drivers of all this distress. Cheers.

    • Anonymous

      Well that was a trial lawyer answer. when 8% of the claims in the US come from Florida and 79% of the litigation in the US comes from Florida, you have a litigation crisis. Florida laws have leaned to the trial bar too long and they have taken advantage of average Floridians with excessive lawsuits. The insurance companies don’t pay for that ultimately, the consumer does! And we have the highest homeowners rates in America as a result…

  4. Brian

    Anybody who spends more than 10 minutes researching will quickly come the same conclusion: The largest problem facing homeowners insurance carriers in 2021-2022 is the exponential increase in litigation related to roofing claims. The average insurer in FL has experienced a 600-700% increase in roofing related litigation. Some of this claim activity is legitimate but the majority of it is suspect and is being facilitated by “assignment of Benefits” contracts that put the homeowner at odds with its own insurance company and places the roofing contractor in control of the claim submittal process. Most of the homeowners do not understand what they are getting into and the cold-calling and sales practices by many roofing companies has gotten out of hand. Yes, I’m an insurance agent and yes, i am a little biased….and it is true that the insurance companies are having some of the same challenges that all business are experiencing like keeping up with the ever-increasing cost of building materials, labor prices and the proper amount that it might cost to replace a roof in this post-pandemic world. Its not just the roofing industry that’s at-fault, and there are some changes that all sides need to make in order to bring health back to this vital marketplace.

 

What is the most glaring political issue facing Floridians ahead of Legislative Session?
×
%d bloggers like this: