By Jackie Llanos, Florida Phoenix
The state’s insurer of last resort has paid about $823 million in claims related to the 2024 hurricane season, Citizens Property Insurance CEO Tim Cerio told state senators on Tuesday.
Tim Cerio, President, CEO and Executive Director of Citizens Property Insurance Corp., via: Citizens.
Still, 11% of claims filed after hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton made landfall are still open and 44% were closed without customers receiving any payments, according to data Cerio presented to the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee.
Of the 34,645 claims closed without payment, Cerio said Citizens denied 10,655 and closed the rest for various reasons, including that people mistakenly filed with the wrong company.
“As the state-created insurer of last resort, and not-for-profit insurer of last resort, we really have no financial incentive to not pay claims, zero,” Cerio said.
While nearly half of the people who opened claims after Milton received payment from Citizens, the payout rates for Debby and Helene claims were much lower (24% and 28%, respectively) because the damage was mostly caused by floods. Citizens customers with personal residential policies are required to buy separate flood insurance.
Additionally, Citizens plans to shed nearly 300,000 policies in 2025, continuing its efforts to reduce the number of people who depend on it. The continued “depopulation” efforts would take the corporation down to fewer than 800,000 policies, Cerio said. However, the rate of Citizens’ policies assumed by other companies in 2025 is projected to be lower than the 477,821 it sent to the private market in 2024.
Depopulation means customers can’t stay with Citizens if another company offers a renewal premium up to 20% higher than the state’s homeowners’ insurance. The corporation began emphasizing this practice to quell the ballooning of policies, which reached a recent peak of 1.4 million in October 2023.
Tax breaks
Florida state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia. (Photo credit: Florida Senate)
Cerio stressed the importance of home hardening efforts to reduce damage from hurricanes and storms. Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, who chairs the committee, said he wants sales and property tax breaks for people making improvements to their homes and doesn’t believe the state should profit from those efforts.
“Let’s say you have a 1,300 square-foot level built in 1970 that’s five blocks from the coast. Let’s incentivize the belt for them to build to today’s code, today’s elevation, and give them a 20-year tax break,” Ingolia said.
“Freeze their property taxes for 20 years. Those are the types of conversations that I’m bringing to the Senate president, I’m bringing to the governor, to see if we can implement that new policy. Because if you think about it long term, if we have more resiliency on the coast 20 years from now, we may have hurricanes hit with dramatically reduced amount of damage.”
