Florida's 'last resort' property insurance provider will increase rates by 6.4 percent

Citizens Property Insurance Corp. rate increases will take effect Tuesday, as thousands of homeowners a week continue turning to the state-backed insurer for coverage.

The increases, which apply to what are known as “personal lines” policies, were approved by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation in June.

They include an average 6.4 percent increase for homeowners with “multi-peril” policies — by far the most-common type of policy.

Customers with other types of policies will see average increases ranging from 8.4 percent to 11 percent.

Citizens initially asked for larger rate increases, but the Office of Insurance Regulation scaled back the requests. For example, Citizens had requested a 10.7 percent increase for multi-peril policies.

The increases come as Citizens, which was created as the state’s insurer of last resort, experiences massive growth amid turmoil in the private insurance market. As of Friday, Citizens had 1,098,762 policies.

As a comparison, it had 521,289 policies on Oct. 31, 2020, and 725,942 policies on Oct. 31, 2021.