Insurance companies continue to drop Central Florida homeowners

Without much warning, thousands of Central Floridians have received the same notice from their homeowners insurance companies: You've been dropped.

The messages have come to people who have never filed a homeowners claim and to some who have. And many have had the maddening experience of being told that their policies would be shifted from one insurance company to another — sometimes more than once.

They don't care about the terminology their insurers use; to them, "nonrenewed" isn't any kinder than "canceled."

"I understand that they've canceled a lot of them, but I never talked to anybody about it," said Jay Hance, a senior citizen who lost the Allstate policy on his Summerfield home after 10 years. He says the company even canceled his policy a few months before it was scheduled to come up for renewal — sending him a check for the balance of the money.

" ... Now, I have to find someone to replace it. That's what hurts," Hance said.

In the past two years, as state regulators largely have focused on insurers' rate-increase requests, insurance companies have said they planned to drop thousands of Florida policyholders. State Farm and Nationwide, among the five largest companies providing homeowners insurance in the state, said in the fall that they would drop 50,000 and 40,000 policies respectively.

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