About 400,000 customers of Citizens Property Insurance Corporation will soon be asked to move their policies into the private market. Ten insurance companies have gotten approval from Florida regulators to take over the policies.
Citizens is the state-run insurer. That means taxpayers would help cover the damage left by catastrophic events, like category 5 hurricanes. The state is trying to cut down on Citizens' exposure to those kind of losses. The company insures property in high risk areas that no private carriers wanted to cover – until now.So, customers will be notified over the next month if they've been chosen to move into the private insurance market. They can choose to decline the offer.
About a third of customers previously targeted for removal opted to stay with Citizens.
The company now has about 1.2 million policy holders. It wants to unload more than half a million of them over the next two years.
