Some Florida residents whose mobile home insurance is provided by Citizens Property Insurance will be enjoying lower premiums soon as the firm has announced that it will provide decreased premiums to its policyholders despite recently receiving news that state regulators have approved a 10% increase for the insurance company's policies.
Homeowners who live in counties like Sarasota and Manatee who have Citizens Property policies not including catastrophic coverage like hurricanes and sinkholes will be provided with a rate lowered by 3.4%. This is despite the fact that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation has recently approved a 10.3% increase for property policies statewide and an increase of 9.2% for mobile property policies.
Citizens Property reportedly requested for a 9.7% rate increase. However, state insurance regulators approved rates that are higher than what the firm had requested because, according to them, they used a different method of calculating the needed rate. They added that the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund was not included in regulators' calculation of new rates.
Meanwhile, mobile home insurance rates among Citizens Property clients in Sarasota and Manatee will also enjoy certain amounts of savings. The firm has revealed that policy rates for mobile properties will decline by 14%, excluding catastrophic coverage. The 14% decline will cover the coastal areas of Manatee, while non-coastal Manatee areas, and the whole Sarasota County region, will be given a 17.3% decrease in their mobile property policies.
Citizens has over 23,000 policyholders in the county of Manatee and over 54,000 policyholders in the county of Sarasota. According to the insurance firm, the request for increase was due to rising sinkhole claims and other property risk factors. Insurance industry observers have stated that the increased rates are needed to allow Citizens, a state-backed provider, to avoid any competition with private insurance firms and to allow the firm to be self-sufficient.
Insurance experts have also added that the 10% rise in rates granted by regulators will greatly help the program, but sooner or later, further increases will be needed to keep the program going. Meanwhile, residents in covered counties are thankful that they were given some breathing space in the form of lower mobile home insurance and regular property insurance rates.
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