Hot on the heels of a significant rate cut in December, Florida’s Security First Insurance has announced another average decrease for one of its homeowners products.
The use-and-file decrease will average about 5.2% for the carrier’s Signature+ HO3 policies, a product launched last Sp
ring. And starting in May, those policyholders renewing policies for the first time will see a 20% reduction in all-peril and water deduc
tibles, the company announced. The reduction follows an 8% average decre
ase for Security First’s legacy Signature HO3 policies, a product that is no longer available to new policyholders.
The decreases are the latest signs of a warming Florida property insurance market, three years after state lawmakers quas
hed one-way attorney fees and assignment-of-benefit agreements. In the last 12 months, regulators have approved multiple rate decreases for Florida insurers’ HO and other policies,
including, recently, an average 8.7% reduction on Citizens Property Ins
urance Corp. personal lines policies and a 3.3% average rate decrease for Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance.
The latest Security First decrease will impact some 11,000 homeowners, company officials said.
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The system uses a bit of artificial intelligence along with building-permit a
nd other records, photographs and adjusters’ intuition to find possible oversights by insurance company adjusters, including miss
ed property damage, inaccurate material prices, and cases in which insurers offer to pay only repair costs instead of full replacement value.
“We think homeowners can use this to negotiate with the carrier on the final amount,” said Ben Mandell, a former homebuild
er and an independent adjuster since 2017. He has worke
d with fellow independent adjuster Mark Vinson to develop the InsuranceClaim123 system over the past year. Vinson, a c
omputer science major in college, developed the website.
With the website, homeowners can alleviate that “gnawing feeling” that they’re not being fully paid for legitimate claims, Mandell said.