What Hurricane Ian could mean to Florida’s struggling property insurance industry
The damage from Hurricane Ian comes as Florida already faces a property insurance crisis.
Policyholders in Florida pay the nation's highest rates, and huge losses have forced six Florida-based insurers into insolvency.
That has forced hundreds of thousands of homeowners to sign up for Citizens insurance, the state-backed insurer of last resort.
For now, Citizens says it has the money to cover Ian damages.
"Bottom line is, to our customers, we have ample claims paying ability to take care of all Ian claims. Folks shouldn't worry about that at all,” said Michael Peltier, a spokesman for Citizens.
Citizens says it has $13.6 billion in reserves and has projected paying 225,000 claims from Ian worth a total of $3.8 billion.
The insurer says that means there is money left if Florida were to get hit by a second storm this year.
But Citizens does not provide flood insurance and is only covering Ian's non-flood-related damage.
If a second storm were a major wind event, the payout for Citizens could be bigger.
While Citizens is set up to never go insolvent, it could end up having to impose a surcharge on all Florida property insurance policies.
"If we get hit with another major storm, Citizens would be able to handles those claims but we may be at risk to have to levy surcharges on our policyholders or other Florida insurance consumers if we lost our ability to pay claims,” Peltier said.
In the weeks leading up to Ian, Citizens was taking on about 8,000 new policyholders a week, and now has over a million total–much more than it was ever designed for.