PALM BEACH GARDENS - Several companies are joining Florida's insurance marketplace as the state's insurer of last resort looks to shed more than 300,000 policies.

At the end of 2023, Citizens Property Insurance was responsible for 1.2 million policies; down from a record high of more than 1.4 million earlier in the year. The state-backed insurer is in the process of a "depopulation" program to shift policies to private companies. Recently, several new companies started taking policies away from Citizens. "Most of these are take-out companies from Citizens; established for the purpose of having someone else service the policy because Citizens just has way too many."

These so-called "take-out" companies get the first year's premium from Citizens when it takes over a policy.

Now some of these companies, like Slide Insurance, will write policies outside of Citizens.

If the offer is within 20% of what you were paying at Citizens, you will be dropped from the insurer of last resort.

"Citizens says if you have a premium and it is 15% more than us, you can’t come with us," said Greg Buck, the owner of a local insurance brokerage said.

These are some of the newer companies to the market: Florida Peninsula, Southern Oak, American Traditions Insurance, People's Trust, Condo Owners Reciprocal Exchange, Security First, Edison Insurance.

"Not much of a track record on a lot of those carriers because some of them were created brand new, but we’ve also seen the fact that it will hopefully stabilize the rates as these companies try to become competitive," Buck said.

Citizens projects about 338,000 policies will move to private insurers this year.

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