Citizen’s Property Insurance facing 900 new lawsuits a month

A month after state lawmakers were called back to Tallahassee to fix a broken homeowners insurance industry in Florida, the crisis continues.

“While we’re sitting here today, we’re a little less than 19,000, but we’re fast approaching 19,000 lawsuits,” Elaine Paskalakis of the civil property insurance said during a meeting of the claims committee earlier this month.

Citizens, the state-backed insurer of last resort, not only faces rising lawsuits but also absorbs about 12,000 policies a month.

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“Last year at this time they (citizens) grew by about 5,000 policies a week, so they are growing exponentially,” says State Senator Jeff Brendes (R-Pinellas). “They have about $ 6 billion in cash and about $ 300 billion in potential liability if they have a big storm.”

Due to rising police and lawsuits, Citizens recently approved $ 50 million in court costs, and the state-backed insurer must approve another $ 50 million when it meets in July.

“Citizens are all on deck, and frankly, I don’t know how they’re going to manage all of this, we’re never going to let a private insurance company grow as fast as citizens are growing right now,” Brandes says.

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The rise in policies and lawsuits involving citizens underscores how volatile the homeowners ’insurance market in Florida remains, even after an emergency special session in May when lawmakers took a number of steps to stabilize the industry.

Although Florida’s precarious situation is now bad, lawmakers and council members agree it could worsen if a hurricane hits this season. Florida has not had to face a major hurricane since 2018, however lawsuits have increased and nearly a dozen private insurance companies have been liquidated. This will speed up when a storm comes.

The story goes on

“Let’s just pray that there isn’t a storm this year, because citizens will have to manage what could be a million policies by the end of the year, and I don’t know how they’re going to do that,” Brandes says.

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