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Officials from Allstate's Florida subsidiaries spent two hours Tuesday fielding questions at an Office of Insurance Regulation hearing in Tallahassee on their request to raise statewide rates by an average of 33 percent and 18 percent. The Allstate Floridian insurance companies, which changed their names to Castle Key last year, have about 250,000 policies, making them Florida's third-largest private home insurer. Nearly three-fourths of those policies are with Castle Key Insurance, which is proposing the higher increase and the rest are with Castle Key Indemnity. The Insurance Consumer Advocate's office recommends a rate hike of 15.4 percent for the insurance company and rate decreases for the indemnity company. Deputy Insurance Commissioner Belinda Miller said regulators will weigh Castle Key's proposal and testimony at the hearing "very carefully" to see if the rate need is justified. "With this rate change, our customers can have greater confidence that we will have the...funds to pay all their claims," said Bonnie Gill, a vice president for the companies, adding that their premiums haven't kept pace with expenses since 2007. The average proposed increase for Castle Key Insurance works out to $412, or $34 a month, for policyholders and the average increase for Castle Key Indemnity works out to an extra $243, or $20 a month, according to the company. Bob Lee, an OIR actuary, grilled Castle Key representatives on several points: Why didn't the companies include information on how they calculated estimates included in its rating filing? This issue came up with several parts of the rate proposal. After Lee's questions about the companies' profit margin, for instance, he said every part of the proposed rates should be backed up. "When you make a rate filing in Florida, you certify all material information is in the filing and it's all there, which means yours expectations and assumptions...are not very relevant," he said. Estimates can't just be "picked out of the air," Lee said during another part of the hearing. Why don't the companies' projected losses reflect that its claims payouts for sinkhole damage could decrease and that its discounts will be smaller? About a year ago, the companies started dropping coverage for minor damage such as cracks from sinkholes unless a policyholder requested the coverage. So only 4.5 percent of its policyholders now have the coverage as opposed to 100 percent before the change. Gill said the impact on projected losses is not clear enough yet because there are still some policies that have only been without the coverage for a few months. "Certainly the frequency has dropped off," she added. Later in the hearing, Steve Alexander an actuary for the Insurance Consumer Advocate's office noted a similar issue. He said the companies' projections of its losses rely too much on a trend from 2007 to 2009 where premiums dropped dramatically. He said he thinks that's a result of the state's move during that time to double discounts for homeowners who fortify their homes against hurricanes. But insurers are rethinking the size of the discount now so Alexander said premiums should rise. Did the companies use the risk provision models required under state law? "It was our understanding that we could use a method other than the prescribed Florida method as long as sufficient support was provided," said Shantelle Thomas, an actuary for Castle Key. "It's not likely we'll consider this part of the filing as it is," Lee said. Does the proposed 8.8 percent profit margin factor in that so much of the companies' potential catastrophic risk is transferred to reinsurance companies, which sell insurance to insurers? A company's potential profit typically reflects the amount of risk it takes on. "Most entities don't have a large transfer of risk" through a mechanism like reinsurance, Lee said, adding that Castle Key proposes directly passing the reinsurance expenses to customers through rates. Robin Haworth, a technical actuary for Allstate, said the parent company takes a "holistic" approach to its profit and aims to earn a 10 percent profit overall. "We don't adjust those by business unit," he said. But if it did, he said he would think the Florida companies would be riskier, so the profit would be higher. "I don't think that's extravagant for Florida homeowners," he said, adding that the reinsurance is considered in that the company would need more of it if it had less cash. Why did the companies include an annual rate of return on investment from 2008 instead of more recent information? "Wasn't 2008 pretty much the height of the financial crisis?" Lee said. "We used information that was most recent at the time we were working on the filing," Haworth said, adding that the 2009 information is similar. Why are the companies' costs of advertising and agent commissions so high given one isn't selling new policies? "It's been a long time since [Castle Key Insurance] has written any new business," Lee said. "So you're allocating a cost to acquire business at the same level as a company not acquiring new business?" he said, asking why the larger company's policyholders should pay for advertising and other costs related to getting new business. Gill said a large part of the so-called acquisition costs are also used to continue helping existing customers, who come up for renewal every year. Some advertising is "meant to remind our customers of the strength of the company, the value that they're getting with the policy," she added.

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Home and condo unit owners have reported spikes in property insurance costs. Subsidiaries of Allstate, the third largest private home insurer in Florida, will defend their proposed 33 percent and 18 percent rate hike requests at an Office of Insurance Regulation hearing today. And in the coming weeks, regulators will weigh rate hikes by Royal Palm Insurance, which is among the state's top ten private home insurers, and Citizens Property Insurance, the state-backed insurer that is Florida's largest. But there is one area where premiums may be decreasing this year: condominium master policies, which cover the exterior and structure of condo buildings. Sean Virtue, an insurance agent at Smith Watson Parker Insurance, said the premiums for all of the condominium master policies he handles have decreased every year for the past four years. He's now handling 25 policies. Virtue said that may change next year due to possible increases in reinsurance, or backup coverage, costs. Here are some strategies he said he uses to help condo buildings look for ways to lower their premiums: Look for coverage you may not need. For instance, a Dania Beach condominium he handles lowered the liability portion of its coverage, which helped it offset an increase in a fee for the state's Florida Insurance Guaranty Association. Another condominium in Pompano Beach dropped coverage for terrorist attacks. "What are the chances a South Florida Association would be under attack from a terrorist organization?" Virtue said he pointed out to the association. Check to see if your condo unit has coverage that could overlap with what's offered in the master policy. For instance, he said condo unit owners' policies are required to have $2,000 of coverage to cover a condo association assessments for catastrophe damage. So if virtually all residents in a condo have the coverage, the building might decide to increase its deductible or drop the part of its master policy that covers upgrades required by new building codes. If the condo board does that and a major hurricane strikes and a special assessment is required to either cover the deductible or the building code upgrades, the condo unit owners' policies would at least cover $2,000, Virtue said. The Pompano Beach condo also dropped its coverage for the building code upgrades. Virtue said it's a risk but the building was struggling with $200,000 in unpaid homeowners association fees so bare-bones coverage made financial sense in that case. Get a new appraisal done to see if the rebuilding cost of your condo building has dropped. In many cases, they have due to lower construction and gas costs, Virtue said. State law requires new appraisals every three years.

South Florida home prices held up in May, but analysts still aren't predicting a housing recovery anytime soon.

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