Homeowners insurance competition report shows some Florida counties lacking

Florida Homeowners Insurance

Some kinds of residential policies in Monroe and Miami-Dade counties are coming up short in options.

A new report has now been issued by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation and has shown that in the counties of Miami-Dade and Monroe, there is a notable lack in competition among homeowners insurance companies for certain kinds of residential policies.

This report has brought unwelcome news at a time in which the state is attempting to shrink its last resort coverage.

The state has been seeking to reduce the size of Citizens Property Insurance Corp. by sending a growing number of its policies over to private insurers. However, when the homeowners insurance options are lacking for certain residential policies within two major counties, this may start to generate some struggles in that effort.

The homeowners insurance report was produced based on a law from 2013 that is meant to keep customers away from Citizens.

Florida Homeowners InsuranceThe hope for the law was that it would send a growing number of home insurance customers in the direction of private insurers. However, in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, that is proving to be a challenge. The reason is that the 2013 law was designed to gradually boost the restrictions on the homes that would qualify for insurance policies from Citizens. That said, the restrictions would not apply in counties where it had been decided that there was a lack of a “reasonable degree of competition.”

The recent report concentrated on insurance policies that included home and condo coverage from $900,000 to $1 million. The reason that this was the focus is that those were the first levels of policy that were targeted to be pushed out of qualification for Citizens coverage by the 2013 law’s restrictions.

However, the report has now identified Miami-Dade and Monroe counties as being lacking in a “reasonable degree of competition” when it comes to that type of homeowners insurance policy. It pointed out that the coverage from Citizens in Monroe represented 96.8 percent of the market, and in Miami-Dade, that figure was 62.5 percent. Until the competition situation improves, it could be impossible for those policies to be legally shed by Citizens.

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