Florida Consumer Advocate: increase Citizens rates 30 percent?
by Michael C. Bender | March 20th, 2009
Florida Insurance Consumer Advocate Sean Michael Shaw told The Palm Beach Post that lawmakers should let Citizens premiums increase by as much as needed to make the state-run insurer financially sound.
“Whatever the number is that Citizens needs to be at to be actuarially sound, that’s what I advocate,” Shaw said. (Listen here.)
A Citizens task force said that number could be as much as 30 percent statewide. CFO Alex Sink said making Citizens “actuarially sound” could mean a 60 percent jump for some homeowners along the coast, but that lawmakers should aim for less.
“We’ve got to start somewhere,” she said. “We can’t bite off the whole apple, but we’ve got to start beginning to take little bites to get Citizens more on a sound financial footing.”
With lawmakers ready to let a three-year rate freeze expire, Shaw said that he wasn’t asking legislators to cap that increase at a specific number.
He said he didn’t want anyone’s premium to increase, but that a Citizens hike was a “good thing” for homeowners with private insurance policies who are subsidizing those with policies from the state-run insurer.
The Citizens Mission Review Task Force has suggested capping increases at statewide average of 10 percent.
Tags: Citizens, Property Insurance
Where's the money? Use The Post's interactive database of who wants and who's getting federal dollars.
Use these interactive graphics to find and contact Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast legislators.
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:35 am
[...] full story here. Posted in Florida. Tags: Alex Sink, Citizens Insurance Company, Sean Michael Shaw. « [...]
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:39 am
Citizens insurance should NOT be allowed to raise their rates 30% to continue to rob the pockets of Florida citizens. The greedy fat sakaried employees need to be eliminated or reduced so that Citizens is stable. We have had no real hurricanes for the past few years so where is all the premium money going. The crooks fighting for this raise should be lined up a shot.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 am
you save some money because property values decline and you can lower your insurance premium along with taxes in these tough economic times to save money. The crooks at Citizens are trying to find ways to off set the loss so they can continue to pay those large fat pay checks of administrative staff thats wroks at Citizens. I say reduce staff and the budget and STOP ROBBING FLORIDIANS…..YOU CROOKS!!!!