No home is immune to dropped coverage

The St. Petersburg Times published a story about a family in St Pete who literally built a fortress made of steel and concrete that could withstand almost any hurricane that hit Florida.

Despite that, State Farm dropped their coverage. Of course, State Farm claims it was solely due to a random reduction in the number of policies that they lost coverage. We get the question a lot: what happened to State Farm? I thought they left?

What happened to State Farm?

Well, in short, State Farm did threaten to leave Florida; however, as having State Farm in the state is better than having one less option for homeowners to insure their homes, the state of Florida later allowed State Farm the ability to raise premiums. In return, State Farm was allowed to drop a significant amount of its policies.

This means that State Farm is sticking around in Florida for the time being, though with fewer policies and higher premiums. While this may sound bad, it is, in the end, better than not having policies for our homes at all!

What does this say about Florida insurance?

Overall, State Farm adds a great deal of value to the Florida insurance market and tends to handle their claims better than most of the companies providing sinkhole coverage.

At the same time, while it is good that State Farm is staying, the state of Florida must do more to draw other, quality insurance companies into the state.  Several of the companies Charlie Crist bragged he brought into the State have already gone out of business, and some have even been sanctioned by the state for a lack of proper funding.

Therefore, one can only help that the state government will continue to seek out insurance companies who are willing to provide Florida homeowners with decent home insurance.