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COPYRIGHT 2005 Ocala Star-Banner
Byline: Ryan Conley
Aug. 7--OCALA, Fla. -- Instances of damaging tropical weather hitting Florida isn't the only thing expected to be on the rise in the coming years. So will the premiums on your property insurance.
Four hurricanes caused more than $22 billion in insurable damages last year, staggering figures that insurance companies say yielded record losses from an already mostly unprofitable state.
And those figures don't include the $640 million in losses racked up by Hurricane Dennis this June in the Florida Panhandle.
No less than 11 insurers have said adios to Florida since December, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, and a 12th, Safeco, announced several days ago that it too would be exiting the state.
Allstate Floridian, the state's second largest writer of policies at about 750,000 homes is dropping about 95,000 policies from areas it deems high-risk.
"You don't have a homeowners crisis, you have a meteorological crisis," said Dr. Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the nonprofit Insurance Information Institute in New York. "And unfortunately, there is nothing but bad news for Florida."
So, is every insurer ready to pull out of Florida?
"We believe that large national carriers, particularly if they are publicly traded, would wish they didn't have to write homeowner policies in Florida," said Polina Chernyak, a national analyst with Standard & Poor's in New York. "But because of images problems, they will stay."
Sam Miller, the executive vice president of the Florida Insurance Council, agrees.
"There will not be a mass exodus out of the state," he said. "But you will see rate increases."...
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