How big is yours? – Sun Sentinel

State Farm Florida is the third-largest property insurance coverage firm in Florida, by coverage rely. It’s a incontrovertible fact that the Florida offshoot of the nationwide insurer hasn’t needed you to know over the previous eight years.

State-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the so-called “insurer of last resort,” is as soon as once more the most important property insurer in Florida. And Fort Lauderdale-based Universal Property and Casualty is quantity two.

The three firms’ Florida market shares had been revealed within the latest launch by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation of coverage counts of all 126 state-regulated property insurers — the primary full listing made public since 2014.

Public launch of the market share listing was mandated in a package deal of insurance coverage reforms enacted throughout a particular legislative session final May. The reform invoice eradicated a “trade secret” exemption that State Farm Florida and different main insurers had been invoking since 2014 that prevented the general public from seeing a whole image of how Florida insurers are sharing the state’s residential market.

Under the brand new regulation, insurers can nonetheless block launch of their coverage counts for every of Florida’s 67 counties.

But they’re required to supply quarterly updates for the whole numbers of insurance policies coated, added, canceled, and nonrenewed statewide. In December, the Office of Insurance Regulation posted these particulars on its web site for the third quarter of 2022. Data for the fourth quarter might be posted round mid-March, based on an workplace spokeswoman.

Release of the listing makes it potential to check market shares in 2022 with a decade in the past, when coverage counts for every firm had been nonetheless being publicly launched.

A comparability by the South Florida Sun Sentinel reveals that the newest listing is a lot totally different than in 2012, a yr when the business was coping with excessive prices of sinkhole claims, when the personal market was nonetheless recovering from a barrage of hurricanes that struck Florida in 2004 and 2005, and when the state was simply starting its effort to maneuver insurance policies out of Citizens and into newly created “takeout companies.”

[ RELATED: As Florida’s insurance market darkens, companies use ‘trade secret’ to keep data hidden ]

Notably, the 2022 listing is lacking 32 firms that had been on the 2012 listing, but it surely contains 42 firms that weren’t doing enterprise within the state in 2012.

Still, some rankings stay the identical, together with Citizens, Universal Property & Casualty, and State Farm Florida because the state’s prime three insurers.

Lawmakers determined to require public launch of the whole information as a result of the variety of firms asserting “trade secret” made it tough for even the Legislature to research the personal market throughout debates over insurance coverage payments, mentioned Paul Handerhan, president of the Florida-based Federal Association for Insurance Reform (FAIR).

“Every year there would be presentations by the Office [of Insurance Regulation] to the Legislature that would be incomplete,” Handerhan mentioned.

Requiring launch of the total listing is “a good thing,” he mentioned, even when it primarily advantages analysts and teams like FAIR that may use the info to make coverage suggestions.

[ RELATED: State challenges ruling on State Farm secrecy ]

Consumers can use the info to find out which firms are including insurance policies — sometimes an indicator that they’re financially secure sufficient to tackle extra threat, he mentioned. On the opposite hand, if the info reveals that an organization has considerably diminished its coverage rely, that would point out that the corporate was compelled to scale back its publicity as a result of its accessible claims-paying capital is diminishing, he mentioned.

Mark Friedlander, company communications director for the nonprofit Insurance Information Institute, which is funded by nationwide insurance coverage firms, cautioned towards drawing conclusions about firms solely by evaluating adjustments of their coverage counts 10 years aside.

“I have seen many insurers grow their policy count year-over-year but generate an underwriting loss and negative net income,” Friedlander mentioned by e-mail. “Positive premium growth does not necessarily equal financial stability. It’s one of many measures of a company’s health. You also have to look at a company’s combined ratio (measure of underwriting profit), surplus (capital) growth and loss ratio.”

He cited the decade-apart comparability of Citizens’ coverage rely. Unlike private-market firms, when Citizens’ coverage rely grows, it’s an indication that the general insurance coverage market is weakening as a result of prospects can solely qualify if they can’t discover an affordably priced private-market insurer.

But simply evaluating the decade-apart numbers reveals that Citizens had 363,695 fewer insurance policies in 2022 in comparison with 1.43 million a decade earlier — which at first look might be thought of a constructive signal.

What the comparability doesn’t present is that Citizens had diminished its coverage rely by greater than 1 million after 2012 and was right down to about 420,000 in 2019 — dropping it under Universal — earlier than ballooning again to 1.07 million insurance policies by the third quarter of 2022.

Citizens’ latest development has come underneath scrutiny by lawmakers and business watchdogs who’re involved that insurance coverage shoppers statewide might be compelled to pay particular assessments if an outsized Citizens is unable to pay claims after a collection of catastrophic storms. Several reforms have been enacted over the previous yr to extend premiums and make the corporate much less enticing than private-market rivals.

Universal added 76,681 insurance policies in comparison with 2012 and with 629,229 is again in second place behind Citizens. Asked to touch upon the rationale for the online improve, spokesman Travis Miller mentioned by e-mail, “It is difficult to make generalizations about data points that are 10 years apart, especially when many significant factors have influenced the Florida residential property market at various points during that period.”

Nonetheless, Miller mentioned, “the information does reflect the consistency of [Universal’s] efforts in being a primary choice of consumers and agents for their residential insurance needs.”

State Farm Florida, an organization spun off by mum or dad State Farm after Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992, elevated by 160,152 insurance policies since 2012 to stay firmly in third place with 558,604 insurance policies.

In 2014, State Farm Florida was the primary main insurer to assert a “trade secret” exemption to forestall launch of its county-level coverage information by way of a searchable database accessible on the Office of Insurance Regulation’s web site. In court docket filings, the corporate mentioned the info gave rivals an unfair benefit by revealing the place State Farm Florida’s enterprise was concentrated.

The firm’s proper to invoke commerce secret over the info was affirmed in 2017 following a three-year court battle with the Office of Insurance Regulation. After State Farm’s victory, 21 different insurers adopted go well with by declaring their very own information commerce secret.

In addition to blocking these firms’ county-level information from public launch, the Office of Insurance Regulation additionally omitted their state-level information from market share stories posted on its web site.

[ RELATED: Insurance companies are ordering more home inspections. Here’s what to expect ]

Commenting on its quantity three rating as proven within the newly launched statewide information, State Farm Florida spokeswoman Roszell Gadson mentioned, “State Farm continues to maintain the financial strength to be there for our Florida customers. We are proud to be able to keep the promises we have made to be there when they need us most.”

The comparability reveals that 32 firms have exited Florida’s market since 2012, both by chapter, a merger with one other firm, acquisitions, or a lack of appetitive for insuring Florida dangers. Among the notable failures had been St. Johns Insurance Co., the fourth-largest supplier of non-public residential insurance policies in 2012, with 175,279 insurance policies. It went into liquidation in February 2022.

Other failed firms not on the 2022 listing are Southern Fidelity (76,624 insurance policies in 2012), Universal Insurance Company of North America (70,393), and FedNat (57,637).

But the comparability additionally reveals that 42 firms have entered the state since 2012, and never all of them began earlier than the business’s fortunes started to bitter in 2017.

Companies on the 2022 listing that weren’t doing enterprise in 2012 embrace Heritage Property & Casualty (No. 9), a publicly traded firm that was seeded with Citizens take-out prospects starting in 2013. Heritage grew to 247,000 insurance policies by 2015, however scaled right down to 175,869 by 2022.

Other newcomers embrace No. 16 Kin Interinsurance Network, an organization began by tech entrepreneurs that depends on publicly accessible information to set pricing for houses in dangerous states equivalent to Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Oklahoma. After debuting in Florida in 2017, Kin had 102,998 insurance policies in 2022 and was the state’s sixteenth largest house insurer.

Likewise, Slide insurance coverage Company, a Tampa-based firm based in February 2022 by former Heritage CEO Bruce Lucas, shot to seventeenth place after the corporate agreed to amass as much as 147,000 insurance policies left stranded by St. Johns’ failure.

[ RELATED: After latest insurance reforms, what rights do policyholders have left? ]

A decade with out hurricanes enabled many private-market firms to construct earnings and market share, however that pattern ended for probably the most half starting in 2017. That was the yr Hurricane Irma entered southern Florida and swept north, affecting all 67 counties and inflicting round $50 billion in injury.

It was additionally the yr after a Florida Supreme Court ruling made it simpler for policyholders to sue and acquire damages from their insurers. The ruling and the return of damaging hurricanes within the years since have resulted in lots of insurance coverage firms going bankrupt or leaving the state since 2017.

In some cases, policy-count will increase evident within the comparability between 2012 and 2022 principally occurred previous to 2017. Some firms reached a peak previous to 2017 and have declined or held regular since then, and that flip of fortune isn’t obvious within the 10-year comparability.

“I think it’s important to consider the last 10 years and when growth, if applicable, occurred,” says Robert Ritchie, CEO of American Integrity Insurance, which added 170,742 insurance policies between 2012 and 2022 however solely 20,405 since 2017. “The legal crisis began in early 2017, after the December 2016 [Supreme Court] ruling. For American Integrity, we have been basically flat from that point forward. Our growth occurred from 2012 to 2016, which was a time of profitability and surplus growth.”

Since 2017, “No profits means no surplus growth, which means flat or declining policy count for most carriers,” Ritchie mentioned.

Ron Hurtibise covers enterprise and client points for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He may be reached by cellphone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by e-mail at [email protected].