A program aimed at shrinking billions of dollars in liability from Florida's state-run insurance company launches today. Citizens Property Insurance has had to delay the roll-out by more than three weeks.
The Property Insurance Clearing House is part of a sweeping reform of Citizens passed by the Florida legislature last year. The computerized system would allow insurance agents to match homeowners with private companies offering the same - or better - coverage than Citizens.The roll-out was originally planned for January 1st, but was delayed to allow for more testing. Citizens CEO Barry Gilway says a privacy issue was also raised by one particular question in the online questionnaire:
" 'Will you or will you not agree to have a credit report ordered by the participating company?' Frankly we wanted to make absolutely sure that by asking that question, Citizens was not putting itself in a situation where we were creating privacy concerns", Gilway said.
Gilway says Citizens waited for approval from Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation before adding the question to the website.