Citizens Seeking Reduction of PLA Account
After 30 days on the job, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation’s CEO Barry Gilway has identified reduction of the Personal Lines Account (PLA) as step one in restoring Citizens’ role as a residual market. By concentrating efforts on reducing the PLA by 500,000 policies, Citizens’ policy count would drop below 1 million policies. Gilway and Citizens hope to achieve this goal by encouraging private market insurers to pursue the less-exposed PLA business.
“Step number one is getting the PLA policy counts down to where they were at least two-and-a-half or three years ago,” Gilway said. “That’s where the huge increase has occurred, and that provides the greatest opportunity to provide financially viable alternatives for our insured.”
Gilway also has indicated that Citizens needs higher rates instead of relying on potential assessments. However, he recognizes that the rate swings would be too significant in some cases to be fully implemented immediately.