What is Citizens’ position in the homeowners’ insurance market in Florida?
Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, commonly known as Citizens, is a not-for-profit government entity created by the state of Florida to provide property insurance coverage to residents who are unable to find coverage in the private market.
Citizens was established in 2002 in response to the challenges faced by homeowners in obtaining affordable insurance in the aftermath of several devastating hurricanes.
Historically, Citizens has played a significant role in the homeowners’ insurance market in Florida. At times, it has been one of the largest insurers in the state, insuring a substantial number of properties.
Its prominence in the market can be attributed to its obligation to provide coverage to homeowners who are unable to secure insurance from private companies.
Can Citizens’ raise the insurance rates whenever it wants?
Citizens ability to adjust insurance rates is regulated by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR), which oversees insurance practices in the state.
Before implementing any rate changes, Citizens is required to submit a rate filing to the OIR, providing justifications and supporting data for the proposed rate adjustments.
And that is exactly what it did last December, requesting a raise up to 50% for non-primary residences, which got approved.
Because it has been organized by the state originally, it seems like there is a bit of a bias towards the policy changes and Citizens seem to have quite a free hand in its price reform.

How is your homeowners’ insurance affected?
Besides the 50% request for non-primary residences, an average raise of 13.1% for primary residences has been requested.
The biggest hope-killer that has been introduced in this deal, is that this year’s rates cannot be lower than last year’s rates. Meaning that you will not have any hope of paying less, only more.
The question whether your residence is primary, or non-primary depends on the agents of Citizens. And to the question whether you can appeal or not, it is said that you can, but you are on the proving side.
The reason Citizens is raising its pricing is, however, reasonable: It simply cannot sustain itself without.
Because it was founded to give homeowners’ insurance to those who cannot afford or get any other insurance policies, it means that its policyholders are financially weaker and the pricing cannot be as high.
This also leads to Citizens having a massive shortage of around 88.3% below actuarilly sound pricing, which after this change would still be 58.6%.
In other words: Citizens is still cheap, just not as cheap as it was.
As long as the private market keeps going downhill, as mentioned before, Citizens will face a tougher situation in Florida. A spiralling situation that hopefully can be seen turning around soon.