Hurricane Milton caused as much as $55 billion in property damage throughout Florida last week, according to the latest estimates. Hitting just two weeks after Hurricane Helene, Milton was the latest in a series of major hurricanes in recent years to disrupt the property insurance market, Reuters reports.
After taking on policies ceded by other companies that have pulled back or left the state, Florida’s state-funded insurer, Citizens Property Insurance, is the top insurer for the state. With more than 1.2 million policies, Citizens aims to reduce its exposure to less than a million policies through its depopulation program, whereby private insurers agree to take over policies from the state insurer.
A Citizens spokesperson tells Reuters that the insurer has seen about 80,000 claims come in so far related to Milton and that it expects to be able to pay all claims on the two storms without having to levy assessments on non-Citizens policyholders.
