By News Service of Florida
The state’s Citizens Property Insurance Corp. added about 1,000 policies last week, as it continued to see relatively small increases.
Citizens had 781,467 policies as of Friday, up from 780,457 policies a week earlier and 779,995 policies two weeks earlier, according to data posted on its website.
Citizens had 820,882 policies last month before what is known as a “depopulation” program moved policies to private carriers.
While it has slowly added policies since then, Citizens officials expect a large number of policies to exit to the private market late this year through the depopulation program.
Citizens, which was created as an insurer of last resort, became Florida’s largest property insurer in recent years because of problems in the private market.
But state leaders have long sought to hold down the number of policies in Citizens, at least in part because of risks if Florida gets hit by a major hurricane or multiple hurricanes.
Under the depopulation program, private insurers receive approval from regulators to assume batches of policies from Citizens. Depopulation slows during hurricane season.