The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) approved updates to our Commercial Lines policy forms with effective dates on or after February 1, 2023, for new and renewal business. The major updates are outlined below and in the Notice of Change in Policy Terms.

Overview of Updated Forms

The following updates have been made to the policy forms for all four Citizens’ Commercial Lines of business.

Coverages

• Property coverages have been amended to describe different types of personal property that are not covered.
• An Ordinance Or Law coverage provision is added to better express that when there are multiple methods of compliance with the building, zoning or land use ordinance(s) or law(s), the limit of liability will be up to the least amount of the available methods of compliance.
• Clarify requirements for any insured to cooperate, including allowing inspection of property for any loss, submitting to examinations under oath and providing any available information is introduced.

Exclusions

• Exclusions are edited to expand and align terms across lines of business as relevant for each excluded cause of loss.
• The earth movement and settlement exclusion is amended to better express earthquake including land shock waves or tremors – regardless of whether the earthquake, land shock waves or tremors were caused by or occurred before, during or after a volcanic eruption – is excluded from coverage.
• The earth movement and settlement exclusion is amended to better express it includes blasting and subsidence and that the exclusion applies to walls and ceilings in addition to foundations and floors.
• The earth movement and settlement exclusion is amended to express shrinking, bulging, expansion or disarrangement, of walls, floors, ceilings, pavements and patios are excluded and that other types of earth movement are also excluded.

Conditions

• The scope of actual cash value (ACV) calculation in the Loss Settlement condition is expanded to include labor, overhead and profit, taxes, fees, etc.
• Duties of an insured after a loss.

Notice of Change in Policy Terms

Citizens will send policyholders a Notice of Change in Policy Terms with renewal offers. The content of each notice varies by policy form. These notices are available in the Policyholder Notices section for each policy form on the Commercial section of the Agents site.

Resources

For more information, log in to the Agent site, go to the Commercial section and click on one of the four policy types on the left side of the page.