HCI’s TypTap approved for 25,000 policy takeout from still-growing Florida Citizens

HCI Group’s digital insurtech company TypTap is the latest to be approved to takeout policies from Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, as interest grows in securing property insurance risk in bulk from the still-growing insurer of last resort.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation has approved TypTap Insurance Company to assume up to 25,000 policies from Citizens, under Florida’s legislatively mandated depopulation program, a program that aims to encourage private insurers to assume policies from Citizens.

With any depopulation assumption, or takeout, like this, the policyholders will be offered to move to the approved company, but in some cases will be able to reject that, or elect to move to another private insurer.

So the actual number of policies TypTap assumes could be lower than the 25,000 that have been approved.

But, it is the latest signal that there are insurers that feel growing in Florida is now more attractive and feel confident enough in their reinsurance arrangements, as well as their ability to renew those going forwards, to do so.

“TypTap has leveraged internally developed technology enabling it to grow organically in Florida. With the operating environment improving in Florida, we see an opportunity to supplement TypTap’s existing business through the Citizens depopulation program,” explained Paresh Patel, HCI’s chairman and chief executive officer.

Recently, another insurtech focused writer Slide Insurance Company, was approved by the Florida regulator for what could be the largest takeout of policies from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation ever.

While the regulator had said this summer that interest in the depopulation program of Citizens was rising.

Florida Citizens policy count began this year at around 1.15 million, but had risen dramatically from roughly 760,000 policies at the start of 2022.

When we reported on the depop program back on July 7th, 2023, Florida Citizens had more than 1.32 million policies in-force.

Since then, regulator the Florida OIR had approved insurers to assume 280,000 policies from Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation through October 2023.

But still, as of September 29th, the Citizens policy count had ballooned further to reach over 1.4 million.

Which of course drives home the need for more depopulation, but likely also reflects some of the moves being seen by major insurance carriers that continue to pull-back in Florida.

There is now a bifurcation, between Florida specialists, such as HCI and Slide, versus some of the major nationwide carriers that have not yet seen their appetites for risk in Florida recover.

Read all of our news and analysis on the Florida insurance and reinsurance market.