The number of lawsuits filed against Florida’s state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp. rose by a third from 2020 to 2021 as Citizens took on a rising level of claims amid uncertainties in the state’s property insurance market.
The litigated claims update was released by Citizens earlier this month. Average new lawsuits per month filed against the company went from an average of 633 per month in 2020 to 878 last year, the data shows.
The data for Citizens appears to show a greater jump in litigated property insurance claims – most of which relate to catastrophic events – than what the industry as a whole has experienced. The claims litigation-management software firm CaseGlide reports a smaller but double-digit increase in litigated claims industry-wide over that time period.
“There was a year-over-year increase in litigated files of 18% in 2021 over 2020,” CaseGlide told the Florida Record in an email. “For costs per litigated claim, there was an increase across all data of 6% in total legal spending, with indemnity up 7% and attorney fees up 3% for 2021 over 2020.”
CaseGlide monitors litigated claims data for the 17th largest Florida insurers.
The amount of indemnity per litigated case reported by Citizens officials fell significantly in recent years, going from $18,400 in 2019 to $13,800 last year.
In more recent data, CaseGlide reported volatility in litigated claims data for the first two months of 2022. Litigated claims dropped 11% from January to February after shooting up 37% in January, the company said.
CaseGlide has also been tracking Notices of Intent to Initiate Litigation (NOIs), which became a part of the insurance litigation process with the passage of an insurance reform bill that took effect in June 2021.
“We’re still experiencing some monthly volatility with new litigated claims since Senate Bill 76 went into effect in June 2021, and we continue to see NOIs increase steadily,” Wesley Todd, the CaseGlide CEO, said in a prepared statement. “In fact, the volume of NOIs in February is more than double the amount filed in July 2021, the first month they were put into use. Because of that, we still believe that Florida insurers’ litigation exposure is of concern.”
The number of property insurance policies Citizens has taken on has risen 68% between 2019 and 2021, according to company figures, going from 421,332 to 708,919 policies.