Will I Lose My Insurance If I Make A Hurricane Claim?

No. Florida Law prohibits insurance companies from cancelling or non-renewing property insurance policies just because you make a hurricane claim. Florida Statute § 627.4133(3), Notice of cancellation, nonrenewal, or renewal premium states that:

Claims on property insurance policies that are the result of an act of God may not be used as a cause for cancellation or nonrenewal, unless the insurer can demonstrate, by claims frequency or otherwise, that the insured has failed to take action reasonably necessary as requested by the insurer to prevent recurrence of damage to the insured property.

Every property insurance policy is going to list as a duty of the insured to, “protect the property from further damage. If repairs are required to the property the [insured] must make reasonable and necessary repairs to protect the property, and keep an accurate record of repair expenses.”

So let’s say you have a roof leak caused by hurricane damage and you don’t fix the leak or don’t put a tarp on your roof to try and prevent water from continuing to damage your property, the insurance company would be in compliance with the statute if they don’t renew your policy, if they can demonstrate your inaction in fixing the leak or putting a tarp on your roof rises to - a failure of action reasonably necessary as requested by the insurer to prevent the recurrence of damage to your property.

Please note that this does not mean that your insurance company cannot non-renew your policy after a hurricane. They can non-renew your policy whether you made a hurricane claim or not. Insurance Companies are constantly changing the amount of exposure they have by non-renewing policies or adding policies to their book of business. When an insurance company wants to reduce its exposure in a geographical region like the Florida Keys, Miami, or Miami Beach, because they had a lot of hurricane claims that year, they will choose to non-renew a certain percentage of their policies in that area. Let’s say they decide to reduce their exposure after Hurricane Irma by non-renewing 30% of the policies in the tri-county area. They can do that. The non-renewal of a policy in that area, however, cannot be based on whether an individual made a hurricane claim or not.