ORLANDO, Fla. — According to the Florida Insurance Guarantee Association, more than 20,000 insurance claims were unpaid and sent to the association for payment and processing.

What You Need To Know

  •  Some Citizens customers are receiving non-renewal letter in error

  •  Florida Statute 627.4133 was created to protect certain insurance holders

  • Policy holders can't be dropped if unpaid claims stem from Hurricanes Ian and Nicole

The large majority were from Citizens Insurance, which is the last resort option for people in the state.

Diamond Cortes’ Lakeland home was damaged, and she filed a claim with her then-insurance provider United Property & Casualty Insurance. She received a letter informing her she would not be renewed because the company was withdrawing from the state.

Fortunately, she was then able to sign a policy with Citizens Insurance.

“They approved me when no one else did. They knew the situation, and that was a year ago,” Cortes said.

One year later, she received a shocking letter once again.

“They sent me stating that there was damage, but they approved me with the damage, so now they are canceling me with the same damage that I have," she said. "So it didn’t make any sense."

It didn’t make sense to her insurance agent Steve Gensolin, either.

“On a lot of levels, the law has been set up to protect people in that particular circumstance, so we knew that shouldn’t be happening,” Gensolin said.

Gensolin is referring to Florida statute 627.4133, which was written in to law following the 2023 legislative session and says:

(e)1. An authorized insurer may not cancel or nonrenew a personal residential or commercial residential property insurance policy covering a dwelling or residential property located in this state:

A. For a period of 90 days after the dwelling or residential property has been repaired, if such property has been damaged as a result of a hurricane or wind loss…

Gensolin then took this issue up with state Rep. Anna Eskamani.

“You are supposed to be able to maintain your Citizens coverage because you are still waiting for a response from FIGA and you have impacts from hurricanes Ian and Nicole,” she said.

Citizens Insurance representative Christine Ashburn provided a statement in response to the dropped customers:

“We had no way of knowing at the time the policies were issued which policies may have open FIGA claims and the statute 627.4133 was not a part of Florida law at the time. When we make exceptions for cases like this, policies with existing damage are set up to non-renew so we are able to request and collect proof of repairs from policy holders before the policy can be renewed in the following year."

Citizens said after learning about this type of situation they are having their team of underwriters call agents that have policies that were non-renewed due to unrepaired damage to determine if that damage is the subject of an ongoing FIGA claim to review the policy.

So far, 454 policies have been identified as requiring additional underwriting to determine if the policy is eligible for renewal.