The hurricane season in Florida has ended, and insurers are left totting up the bill of damage from Hurricane Hermine which struck in September.
When Hermine came on to Florida’s shores, it ended a record string of 3,966 days – or just over a decade – without a hurricane making landfall in the storm-prone state, according to Colorado State University.
It also brought with it a trail of destruction.
Data from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, which reflects through October, said Hermine resulted in $95 million in property-damage claims.
A close-call from Hurricane Matthew – which brought a powerful storm that caused extensive damage to coastal counties – also resulted in more than 100,000 property-damage claims, adding up to $606 million, the
St Augustine Record reports.
Though Matthew did not make a direct hit, the Category 5 storm came within 50 miles of Florida’s East Coast in early October, and knocked electrical power out for over one million homes and businesses in the state.
State-backed insurer Citizens Property Insurance said it has paid out $10.7 million in claims related to Hermine and Matthew – a “relatively light” impact for the insurer which has $128 billion in exposure, according to the report.
84% of the 4,000 claims have been closed, the insurer said.
“We clearly showed that Citizens is ready as we received excellent feedback for our claims handling from our customers,” Barry Gilway, the Citizens president and CEO, commented. “That said, we will continue to look for ways to improve.”
When it comes to the cost of damage, Florida’s 2016 hurricane season was nowhere near as expensive as some of the state’s previous seasons.
1992’s Hurricane Andrew caused an estimated $24 billion in insured damage in Florida and Louisiana, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
In a new analysis of the national property-insurance industry, Fitch Ratings said damage from Matthew, which also impacted other states, including Georgia and South Carolina, is likely to fall at the “low end” of estimates in the
range of $2 billion to $8 billion.
Updated damage claim reports will be filed in December, according to state insurance regulators.
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