ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida’s chief financial officer is looking at ways to go after Farmers Insurance for its plan to pull its Farmers-branded services from Florida, affecting 100,000 policyholders.
Florida’s Insurance market has been in crisis for some time and another carrier leaving is a blow.
CFO Jimmy Patronis says he plans to hold the company accountable and News 6 asked specifically what the state can do, while Patronis was in Orlando Wednesday morning speaking at a conference on insurance fraud.
“I don’t think they were transparent, and I thought their actions were very ham-handed, it’s just disappointing,” Patronis said.
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His plan now is to take review complaints against the company.
“If there’s a habitual pattern of complaints that are there, that triggered a market conduct study that shows that they were wrong, then we will go and fine them, so we’ve got those tools in our tool kit,” Patronis said.
I’ve always said that when big decisions are made on insurance the policyholder is rarely in the room; unfortunately @WeAreFarmers proved me right. I’ve asked my team to put their heads together in holding Farmers Insurance accountable. I want additional scrutiny on this company. pic.twitter.com/fDgadXndfx
— Jimmy Patronis (@JimmyPatronis) July 12, 2023
When asked if he was concerned about those policyholders being able to find insurance, Patronis said, “I’m concerned but I’m angry at Farmers.”
Farmers leaving is happening at a time when Citizens Insurance, which is supposed to be the insurer of last resort, is already too big.
News 6 asked Patronis if he was concerned those policyholders would end up at Citizens.
“The landscape in Florida has changed,” Patronis said. “Right now we’ve got more interest to the tune of about 186,000 requests for insurance policies at Citizens to be taken out of Citizens to go into the private market, that’s more than all of last year combined.”
But it’s also a drop in the bucket for what Citizens is dealing with.
Citizens president and CEO told the company’s board of governors Wednesday that it was on track to grow to 1.7 million policies by the end of the year.
To put that in perspective, Tim Cerio, Citizens CEO has told News 6 the company should be around 400,000 policies. Cerio made a plea to its board Wednesday to raise rates.
“We have got back to get back to being the insurer of last resort,” Cerio said. “We are the state’s largest property insurer with the lowest rates on top of that. That is going to continue to distort the market and impede recovery efforts.”
Florida has seen numerous insurance companies either leave the state or go into liquidation.
News 6 has reported over the last two years about the difficulty consumers have had finding property insurance, and when they do, they’re paying more than ever for it.
The fallout from Farmers Insurance means even more consumers will be looking for coverage.
“I say to those policyholders pick up the phone and call another carrier,” Patronis said.
Patronis says his office has asked the Florida Association of Insurance Agents to explore methods for a bulk transfer of policies.
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