Florida condominium insurance

Shop around - get quotes from at least two companies would be a start (much like you do with your own insurance, whether it's homeowners, car, or anything else). Don't be surprised if you have to go to four or five companies, and maybe a few more because everyone's insurance has increased - more natural disasters and things like the Surfside disaster are the main drivers, along with the cost of repairing anything these days (supply chain issues, remember?)

You should also take a look at your current policy to see what it covers, along with your claims history. If you've had several expensive claims in the past few years, the premium increase shouldn't be a surprise at all (some would just cancel you, which is what my community's former company did shortly after I moved in). Sit down with your agency or company representative and look for ways where you might save money. Increasing the deductible is an option, but how are your community's finances - would you be able to take a large hit? The state of your reserves fund might also come into play - if it's really, really underfunded (many HOA reserves are), the insurance company may balk at covering you because low reserves or no reserves at all might put them at risk.

In fact, it may be helpful to do some sort of risk analysis to see where you're most vulnerable - your current company may be willing to help with that in order to keep your business.

Make sure you aren't covering areas that really are homeowner responsibility (check your documents). If so, you can adjust the coverage that way and also send letters to the homeowners stating these areas were never association responsibility to begin with, so effective immediately, this will stop.

You will still need things like Directors and Officers insurance, so it would be good to emphasize appropriate behavior among board members like fair and consistent rules enforcement, being transparent in all actions, avoiding conflicts of interests (potential or actual), and so on. Getting insurance against embezzlement (by the property managers and other people) will also be important, so this would be a good time to look at your policies to see what you need or need to tweak. For example, do you have a document retention and storage policy? Where do you store records that are a permanent part of the association's records and is that secure (self storage units aren't a permanent answer).

There may be older conversations on this website about buying master policy insurance - you can read them, but because they're old, don't respond to them, but come back to this conversations with your questions so you'll receive more current information. Good luck!

We use an excellent insurance broker who works primarily with businesses. He does all the shopping around for us. He was a huge help when the company that had all our combined policies and specialized in association insurance pulled out of Florida. Our broker was able to cobble together the same coverage from several different sources. Now or D&O insurance is with one, our liability with another, etc. But we know we are fully covered.

My advice is don't do this yourself. Insurance is critical. You need a good insurance broker.

Also, expect big increases again this year. My own policy went up 50% last year and an additional 30% this year. I'm just happy to still have coverage. Depending on the age of your buildings, it could be a very large increase in premiums due to the new regulations for condos.