Three Florida companies of insurance are in the center stage due to particular decisions and plans that involve thousands of their policy holders.
First is the decision of Nationwide Insurance Company of Florida to no longer renew approximately 60,000 of its policies. The said decision is part of the plan of the insurance carrier to reduce exposure in its personal lines property products.
Although this is considered to be bad news for the homeowners who will be dropped, Nationwide has made an effort to minimize the consequences of their decision. The company has talked with Tower Hill Group, another insurance company based on Florida, to write majority of the policies that were dropped.
According to Nationwide, homeowners will have the option to renew their insurance policies with Tower Hill or go with another company.
With the nonrenewal scheduled to begin by July 2010, it has been assured that there will be no customers who will be affected, insurance-wise, during the coming hurricane season. Following Nationwide’s decision, the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation has confirmed the filing of the nonrenewal plan of the said insurer.
After dropping the 60,000 policies, Nationwide will be left with a total of 250,000 policies in the state. The said figure includes 45,000 policies (personal line property) as well as boat and auto insurance policies.
For the company, the decision to drop a huge number of policies is a difficult one but necessary in order to make sure that they could continue to provide their customers quality products and services.
Meanwhile, State Farm Florida is in the midst of working out details with the state involving their decision to withdraw or cancel business operations. The said decision stemmed from the state’s denial to approve a rate hike petition.
A rate relief was actually granted already which allowed State Farm to discontinue certain discounts on some of its products. The discounts, which companies of insurance are required to offer, range between 5 and 20 percent and were offered to homeowners who have several policies with the insurer, previous claims and burglar alerts systems.
The insurance commission hopes that such discount relief is enough to convince the insurer to stay and continue business in the state.
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