Back in January, State Farm Insurance announced that they would no longer be involving the company with property insurance; this in turn would mean that the company would be dropping 1.2 million policies, over the next couple of years, as they are the largest private property insurer in the State of Florida. State Farm's decision was based on the rejection by the Office of Insurance Regulation to raise their rates 47%.
The original fear would be that this would send thousands of policyholders over to Citizens Property Insurance Corp., a Florida state backed property insurer already overrun with over a million policies. The Office of Insurance Regulation has required that State Farm sell their policies to private insurers and to also placed a ban from them turning any policies over to Citizens. However, according to State Farm, company policy states that agents are prohibited from offering services to other private insurers; they can only be offered to State Farm and Citizens.
This is where a new dispute between the Office of Insurance Regulation and State Farm Insurance Company has begun. State Farm has requested an appeal on the state-approved plan and at the moment, the State regulators have granted it!
