The Shield Our State Coalition is proposing that the state and private insurers form a new partnership in which the state will manage hurricane insurance for all Florida residential and commercial-residential property owners. Private insurance companies, meanwhile, will be responsible for insuring the non-hurricane risk on homes, administering policies and processing claims.

Save Our Homes, Strengthen Florida's Future Growth and Economy

• Our premiums will build up in a new state fund that is exempt from paying federal taxes, leaving more of our money to pay for Floridians' hurricane damage.
• This new fund will be protected by law and several layers of top state oversight to ensure that our money is not used for any other purposes than to cover hurricane losses and is really there to protect us when hurricanes occur.
• This solution will enable the return of a competitive residential insurance market with reasonable and predictable rates, leading to renewed private market competition that can further lower residential premiums
• Private insurers' role in this partnership will be to write our homeowners' policies, collect our entire premium and pass through the hurricane portion of the premium to the state fund.
• Private insurers will then be responsible for covering all the other risks associated with our homeowners' policies - such as fire, theft, and personal liability protection - while also handling all of our policy administration and claims processing.

• Today, over 50 percent of the total residential premium we pay goes to cover the hurricane risk on our homes or commercial-residential property. By having the state control hurricane insurance, the state would be in charge of setting hurricane rates, preventing any possible price gouging by private insurers.
• Additionally, our hurricane premium will not leave Florida; our money will instead stay in Florida and be used only to pay our hurricane claims.
• The billions in dollars that we pay each year in hurricane premiums will build up in this new fund, providing new financial protection from even the biggest hurricanes.

• Private brand name insurers will return to Florida to compete for the non-hurricane portion of our homeowners' policies, leading to renewed private market competition that will further lower homeowners' premiums.
• Florida's families will no longer face the threat of massive state-issued assessments from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (CPIC) and the Cat Fund.
• CPIC will return to the role it was originally supposed to serve - to provide homeowners insurance to those of us who truly cannot obtain it in the private market.

Today, Floridians face a broken residential insurance system and a state at risk of devastating impact to its future growth and economy. We must implement a bold new solution, one which joins our state leaders and the private insurers in a partnership that is truly in the public interest. We cannot afford to wait for someone else to create a solution. As Florida citizens, we must urge our elected leaders to act!