The push for a high-tech clearinghouse for Citizens Property Insurance commercial policies appears to have hit a snag with little time to spare before a January deadline mandated by Florida statute.
“I looked at the numbers and the numbers make no sense and the implementation makes no sense,” Board Chairman Carlos Beruff said at Citizens’ Board of Governors meeting in late September. “So, we’re going to go back to the drawing board and figure it out before we bring a policy forward that we can afford and not continue to increase our costs for our ratepayers.”
Beruff’s comments came a week after Deputy Florida Insurance Commissioner Jane Nelson sent a letter to Citizens’ general counsel. She pointed out that Senate Bill 1028, signed into law in June, requires Citizens to amend its governing platform, known as its Plan of Operation, before establishing the clearinghouses.
The state-created insurer is in the process of finalizing a contract with the winning bidder, a Brown & Brown subsidiary, to administer one of the commercial clearinghouses required by the law. That platform ostensibly would help brokers and insurance agents move more Citizens’ policies to surplus lines insurers.
The state Office of Insurance Regulation must review the plans before the clearinghouses can be set up–but cannot do so as things now stand, Nelson’s letter noted.
“As a result of having neither the amendment to its Plan of Operation establishing the clearinghouse program nor administrator contracts in place, Citizens has not been able to submit to the Office all of the documents necessary for the Office to complete its review,” Nelson’s letter reads. “The Office has requested information to cure deficiencies in the submitted information and has yet to receive satisfactory responses. Therefore, at this time the Office is unable to approve the clearinghouse program.”
Sources speculated that with the Sept. 15 letter, Yaworsky and Nelson may be giving Citizens’ officials a way to quietly delay or kill the controversial plan.
Topics
Florida
Commercial Lines
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