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Written byEvelyn Pimplaskar
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10+ years in insurance and personal finance content
30+ years in media, PR, and content creation
Evelyn leads Insurify’s content team. She’s passionate about creating empowering content to help people transform their financial lives and make sound insurance-buying decisions.
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Edited byJohn Leach
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John LeachSenior Insurance Copy Editor
Licensed property and casualty insurance agent
8+ years editing experience
John leads Insurify’s copy desk, helping ensure the accuracy and readability of Insurify’s content. He’s a licensed agent specializing in home and car insurance topics.
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Updated October 10, 2023
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Table of contents
Table of contents
Beginning in late December, Progressive will start sending non-renewal notices to 100,000 Florida policyholders who have landlord or homeowners insurance through Progressive. The company also said it will no longer insure non-owner-occupied properties.
Policyholders who receive a non-renewal notice have until May 2024 to find replacement coverage. Progressive said it’s struck a deal with Loggerhead Reciprocal Interinsurance Exchange to offer replacement policies to affected policyholders.
Affected policies
In an email sent to insurance agents on Sept. 29, 2023, Progressive said it will no longer provide dwelling and fire coverage policies, known as DP-3 policies, in Florida for landlords and investors. The company will insure only owner-occupied properties going forward.
Progressive will also not renew certain high-risk homeowners policies, the company said.
The move will eliminate 47,000 DP-3 policies and 53,000 high-risk property policies from the insurer’s book of business in Florida, the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) told multiple Florida media outlets.
Progressive also said it will discontinue its relationship with “select agents” in Florida.
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Learn More: How to Find Your Home's Protection Class and ISO Ratings
How this impacts all Florida homeowners
“Progressive’s decision to non-renew approximately 115,000 residential policies in Florida will create more disruption in the state’s volatile home insurance market,” says Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications for Triple-I. “This follows a trend of several national and regional insurers reducing their risk in Florida over the past year through either non-renewals or voluntary market withdrawals.”
The shrinking number of options means it’s more difficult for Floridians to find affordable home insurance coverage.
Florida homeowners face the highest annual average insurance rates in the country — $7,788, Insurify data shows. By comparison, the national average cost is $1,784 per year.
Reasons behind the move
Florida’s exposure to damage from extreme weather is only one reason insurers are pulling back from the state.
“Floridians are seeing homeowners insurance become costlier and scarcer because, for years, the state has been the home of too much litigation and too many fraudulent roof-replacement schemes,” Triple-I CEO Sean Kevelighan said in a recent brief. Although Florida represents less than 10% of home insurance claims nationally, it accounts for 79% of homeowners insurance lawsuits, Triple-I reported.
Progressive emphasized in its statement that it isn’t leaving the Florida market altogether. But, the insurer said, it’s taking action to “ensure our long-term future in the state.”
“Florida represents (about) 6.5% of all single-family dwellings in the U.S., but more than 17% of all homes insured by Progressive Home are located there,” the insurer said. “We need to take steps to find the right balance for our overall property insurance portfolio.
Keep Reading: How to Buy Flood Insurance
What to do next
Since Progressive won’t start sending non-renewal notices until late December, many homeowners won’t know yet if this latest move affects them. But homeowners can shop for insurance at any time.
Alternatively, they can wait to receive a notice and then explore what rates Loggerhead might offer them. The Tampa startup struck an agreement with Progressive to offer coverage to affected homeowners, Friedlander said.
And “former Progressive policyholders will also have the opportunity to shop for coverage with five newly approved insurers expected to start writing in [Florida] in early 2024,” he said.
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Evelyn PimplaskarEditor-in-Chief, Director of Content
Evelyn Pimplaskar is Insurify’s director of content. With 30-plus years in content creation – including 10 years specializing in personal finance – Evelyn’s done everything from covering volatile local elections as a beat reporter to building fintech content libraries from the ground up.
Before joining Insurify, she was editor-in-chief at Credible, where she launched and developed the lending marketplace’s media partnership’s content initiative and managed the restructuring of the editorial team to enhance content production efficiency. Formerly, as tax editor for Credit Karma, Evelyn built a library of more than 300 educational articles on federal and state taxes, achieving triple-digit year-over-year growth in e-files from organic search.
Her early career included work as a content marketer, vice president and managing officer of a boutique public relations agency, chief copy editor for 14 weekly Forbes publications, reporting for large and mid-sized daily newspapers, and freelancing for the Associated Press.
Evelyn is passionate about creating personal finance content that distills complex topics into relatable, easy-to-understand stories. She believes great content helps empower readers with the information they need to make important personal finance decisions.
John LeachSenior Insurance Copy Editor
Licensed property and casualty insurance agent
8+ years editing experience
John leads Insurify’s copy desk, helping ensure the accuracy and readability of Insurify’s content. He’s a licensed agent specializing in home and car insurance topics.
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