According to a bulletin released last week, Citizens Property Insurance plans on inspecting 350,000 homes by 2025.
That’s 70 times more inspections than they did last year. (5200 versus 350,000)
It will increase inspections from about 1% of insured homes to 9% of its insured homes.
Citizens will allocate $43,000,000 and hire private inspection firms for these latest inspections.
With policy counts on the rise, Citizens plans on keeping ineligible properties out, collect accurate premium, and encourage Private Company take-outs.
What Kind of Home Inspections will Citizens perform?
In the past, Citizens focused mostly on the general condition of a property.
These new inspections will also focus on the “Four point” inspection of homes.
Four-point inspections review:
- roofs,
- plumbing,
- electrical, and
- air/heating units
And Citizens believes these inspections and this large expenditure will save them money in the long run.
Here’s why.
Home Inspections should result in sounder properties
Citizens has to be able to guard against Adverse Selection.
Adverse Selection is where people with the greatest chance of loss are all lumped into Citizens.
Although Citizens is the market of last resort in Florida, it doesn’t mean they have to insure homes that are already damaged.
Or ones where there is little or no maintenance performed, so accidents are just waiting to happen.
These inspections will prevent these poorly maintained properties from purchasing a Citizens policy and then placing a claim.
Inspections will Help Citizens Collect Accurate PREMIUMs.
Inspections will likely result in a large number of premium corrections.
For instance:
Fixing incorrect premium credits for wind mitigation.
Increasing coverage to Replacement Cost for properties with low-balled Dwelling Coverage.
Finding unlisted “Other Structures” on properties.
Get More Private Companies to Assume Citizens policies.
Private Companies have told Citizens that current inspections are a key item when deciding which policies to assume.
More inspections means more information on the actual exposure a Company is taking on when assuming a Citizens policy.
And the more information from these inspections means more properties they will take from Citizens.
Why all the Inspections?
- Keep uninsurable properties out of Citizens until they are repaired.
- Higher premium from identifying the actual risk involved with these properties.
- And more private companies willing to take out policies from Citizens.
The hope is that new inspections make Citizens more profitable and get more people out of Citizens and into the private market.
For any questions on Citizens or Home Insurance in general, contact us here.
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