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A management team that, through their former company, exited the Florida homeowners market in 2007 has laid the groundwork for a return through a carrier that itself had a fleeting presence in the business under previous ownership.
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation announced Oct. 1 that it had approved the December removal of up to 22,050 residential property insurance policies from the personal lines account of Citizens Property Insurance Corp. by Longwood, Fla.-based American Colonial Insurance Co., one of two companies tapped for the December takeout by the regulator that had not written Florida residential property insurance during the first half of 2014.
"American Colonial's sole business is automobile insurance," the company says on its website.
Exclusively a writer of nonstandard auto insurance business in Florida and certain other states since its sale to EGI Financial Holdings Inc. in 2010, American Colonial last reported having homeowners policies on its books in 2002 after placing the business into runoff in January 2001. The company reported nearly $1.2 million in Florida homeowners direct premiums written in 1999, but its annual volumes fell off precipitously thereafter.
Conifer Holdings Inc., the parent of Birmingham, Mich.-based specialty commercial and personal lines carriers White Pine Insurance Co. and Conifer Insurance Co., acquired American Colonial, managing general agency affiliate EGIS Insurance Services and their intermediate parent company in a November 2013 transaction with EGI Financial.
American Colonial reported $4.9 million in direct premiums written, consisting of $3.9 million of private-passenger auto liability and $993,000 of auto physical damage premiums, during the first half of 2014, down from $6.5 million in the year-earlier period. It reported zero homeowners premiums during the first half of 2014, and FLOIR data did not list American Colonial among the companies with personal or commercial residential policies in force as of June 30.
White Pine and Conifer Insurance, meanwhile, reported homeowners direct premiums written of $6.3 million and $136,000 during the first half of 2014, representing 27.3% and 1.6% of their respective mixes of business for the period. State-level line of business data is unavailable for the first half of 2014, but Conifer Insurance's homeowners business in 2013 came from Indiana, Illinois and Texas, while White Pine's had been generated in Pennsylvania. White Pine reported in...