Hurricane Ian sends Florida homeowners insurance company into insolvency

Insurance company - Hurricane Ian destruction

United Property & Casualty Insurance Co. experienced larger losses than expected from the storm.

United Property & Casualty Insurance Company was hit harder than predicted by Hurricane Ian and regulators have now taken steps to place the insurer into receivership after the storm sent it into insolvency.

The process has now been triggered to obtain court approval to send the insurer into receivership.

Interim Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky issued a letter to Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, to launch the process to obtain approval from the courts to place the United Property & Casualty Insurance Company into receivership. This, according to publicly available documents on the official website of the Office of Insurance Regulation. The St. Petersburg-based insurer has agreed to this process.

Insurance company - Insolvency

The insurer has been battling with sizeable financial challenges for the last several months, including an announcement in August 2022 that it would be leaving the property market in Florida. At the start of this month, Slide Insurance Co., based in Tampa, took on 72,000 of the troubled insurer’s policies.

A filing on February 10 will move forward to place the insurance company into receivership.

On February 10, a filing was made with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission that was expected to place United Insurance Holdings Corp., the insurer’s parent company, into receivership due to insolvency.

“United was deemed insolvent on February 6, 2023, because if all of the assets of United, if made immediately available, would be insufficient to discharge all of the liabilities of United. … (The Office of Insurance Regulation) has determined that United is operating in an unsound condition that is hazardous to policyholders, creditors, stockholders and the public,” said an affidavit by the Property & Casualty Financial Oversight unit director Virginia Christy, which was attached to the letter from Yaworsky.

This makes the insurance company the latest of many to go into receivership or leave the state’s troubled property coverage market. Last year, six insurers were placed into receivership due to insolvencies. Lawmakers have been scrambling to help reshape the industry and push it back out of its rapid slide into crisis.

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