Everglades Re II Ltd Series 2021-1

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the property insurer of last resort for the Florida marketplace, has appointed its General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer Tim Cerio as its new President and CEO, as long-standing leader Barry Gilway retired yesterday.

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the property insurer of last resort for the Florida marketplace, expects to grow its policy count by around 46% during 2023, to reach roughly 1.7 million policies in-force by the end of the year.

Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation looks set to continue rapidly growing its exposure, with its policy count likely to near record levels again in 2023, according to President and CEO Barry Gilway.

Once again, third-party sources of reinsurance capital, largely from the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, have dominated the reinsurance renewal of Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation in 2022, with ILS investment manager Nephila Capital again taking the largest share.

Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation had originally been seeking more catastrophe bond backed reinsurance for 2022, specifically to fill out layers of its Coastal Account reinsurance tower, but pricing feedback from investors caused the insurer to change plans and these cat bond tranches never made it to market.

The CFO of Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation said today that the reinsurance risk transfer markets are in “disarray”, meaning the insurer won’t be able to buy its targeted program within budget with the June renewals fast-approaching.

For 2022, the staff of Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation are seeking approval to buy roughly $3.64 billion of new risk transfer, across traditional reinsurance and catastrophe bonds, which added to still in-force cat bonds from prior years will take the Citizens program to roughly $4.7 billion for the coming hurricane season.

Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation added on average 32,000 new policies to its portfolios every month through 2021, with projections for the end of 2022 suggesting it may have almost 1.1 million policies in-force, driving the need for more catastrophe bonds and reinsurance risk transfer.

Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation is seeking perhaps the steepest rate increases it has implemented for some years at an upcoming hearing with the regulator.

While Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation could buy as much as $3.4 billion of new reinsurance and risk transfer in 2022, including catastrophe bonds, the main focus is on delivering value, as the not-for-profit property insurer targets cost savings.