One of Florida's newest property insurers has assumed another batch of policies from Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state insurer of last resort. Citizens says the smaller it gets, the better it is for homeowners.
Mangrove Property Insurance's assumption of roughly 20,000 policies, effective June 17, follows the 30,000 Citizens policies that Mangrove took out in April. State regulators approved Mangrove to offer residential coverage in January, and the company said it can assume up to 81,040 policies from Citizens in 2025.
In recent years, some Florida homeowners have had their rates more than double following a series of hurricanes, a major factor contributing to the Sunshine State's housing affordability challenges.
Citizens is seeking to reduce its policy count through a so-called depopulation program, saying more private insurers writing coverage helps stabilize the market and avoid sharp rate increases across the state.
In December, Citizens announced its policy count had fallen below 1 million for the first time in over two years. As of June 20, Citizens said it had 777,592 policies, down 36% from a year ago and 44.9% lower than its October 2023 peak of 1.41 million policies.
“It is simply irrefutable that reforms championed by the Governor and passed by the Legislature have had a tremendous impact on improving this market,” Citizens President and CEO Tim Cerio said in a statement Wednesday. “The data bears this out.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis advocated for the reforms that included making it illegal for contractors to file insurance claims on behalf of homeowners, also known as "assignment of benefits," and eliminating one-way attorney fees that forced insurance companies to cover the legal costs of the plaintiffs suing them. Mangrove is one of 12 new companies to have entered Florida since the reforms in 2022.
St. Petersburg, Florida-based Mangrove expects to begin writing new property insurance coverage across the state. It has not yet announced when that would begin.
"Going forward, we will carry our underwriting culture and commitments into the launch of our statewide voluntary program, in collaboration with agency partners supporting policyholders in every Florida county,” said Stephen Weinstein, founder and CEO of Mangrove, in a statement.