Details on Citizens Property Insurance Corporation and Sinkhole Investigations
Because Citizens Insurance is a state-sponsored entity, the materials associated with their activities are more available than other insurance companies.
Most insurance companies, like State Farm, Allstate, and St. Johns maintain most of their internal claims handling information as confidential and proprietary. But, because Citizens is a public company, Florida allows us to review much of their internal documents.
Therefore, for the purpose of helping any current and future clients experiencing issues with Citizens Property Insurance claims, I did my research.
Request for information
In reviewing some recent materials on Citizens, I found a request for information, submitted to engineering firms who would be retained by Citizens insurance company to conduct sinkhole investigations when insureds submit claims.
I found it interesting on many fronts. Note, in this blog, we seriously try to present information in a balanced way. I avoid “evil empire” rants, as I think this provides no assistance to property owners at all. We leave that for the other websites on sinkholes.
Having said that, I think it would be important for insureds to compare their engineering sinkhole reports with the scope presented in this document. What it reveals is that Citizens appears to have been asking the engineering firms to conduct investigations with specific requirements in mind.
After reviewing these reports
However, having recently reviewed several Citizens’ reports, I can report that many of them do not include many of these.
For example, all engineering investigations should include a floor elevation survey, and this is specifically included in the Citizens engineering scope. But, many of the engineering reports produced by Citizens skip this part, and I think this is an error (and from the scope they prepared, it appears they would agree).
Therefore, if you have an insurance claim filed with Citizens Property Insurance, take a look at your own reports, and confirm that everything is as it should. You don’t want to be taken advantage of.
