I thought I saw a pig flying by when I was running errands at lunch. I guess I didn’t need to fear being pulled over.
From Insurance Journal:
State Farm Florida will remain in Florida under a negotiated agreement that allows it to cancel about 15 percent of its policies and raise rates 14.8 percent. The deal also allows its contract agents to place the business State Farm non-renews with other private insurance companies.
Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty announced the deal today.
State officials said the agreement is better than State Farm cancelling all of its 810,000 home and condo policies and having many of them end up in the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which was a concern with the insurer’s original exit plan.
While the full public story was shrouded in the rhetoric of grandstanding, State Farm’s plans to withdraw might have had something to do with the perfect storm of a massive aggregation of risk, a run-up in reinsurance costs after the ’04 and ’05 storm seasons, and the state’s unwillingness to approve the +47% rate increase State Farm wanted.
