Citizens Property Insurance starts re-inspection program
By Kris Hundley, Times staff writer
If you’re a policyholder with Citizens Property Insurance Corp. who received a letter recently about an inspection of your home or commercial building, you can expect a phone call to schedule an appointment soon. The letter is part of Citizens’ pilot program to re-inspect up to 500 properties to make sure they deserve the wind mitigation credits they’re receiving. Citizens, the state’s biggest property insurer, says about 400,000 of its 1 million policies currently get discounts totaling $700 million. If a re-inspection shows that homeowners are receiving those discounts in error, Citizens’ premium revenues would rise. Based on results from the first batch of re-inspections, Citizens could roll the program out to the larger policy base. Homeowners might not like the thought of losing a discount, but they don’t have much choice. Citizens can refuse coverage if policyholders don’t cooperate.