Florida Family Insurance Review & Complaints: Homeowner’s Insurance

Florida Family Insurance was founded in response to the struggling homeowner’s insurance market in Florida following Hurricane Andrew. They have been insuring Florida homes for over 20 years, through several other hurricanes.

About Florida Family

Florida Family Insurance was founded in 1996, a few years after hurricane devastation led many insurers in the state to fold or stop writing homeowner’s in Florida. Insurance agency executive Rick Hardy created the company to help provide Florida homeowners with an option for coverage in a dwindling market.

The company made it through the record-breaking hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 and has a sound financial rating with multiple solid reinsurers to back them in case of another disaster.

The company is owned by Barrington Capital, LLC., and headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. Policies are sold across the state by local independent insurance agents. Their focus is on home insurance, with options for several types of home as well as flood insurance.

What kind of home insurance products do they offer?

Florida Family’s main product is homeowner’s insurance, and they write a standard policy with several upgrade options. They also write condo, rental dwelling, and flood insurance.

Homeowner’s Insurance

The standard homeowner’s insurance policy covers the structure from a variety of perils. It also includes personal property coverage, liability insurance, loss of use coverage, and more.

The upgrades available for the policy include replacement cost coverage for personal property, special and scheduled personal property coverage, water backup coverage, and more.

There are a variety of discounts offered for home insurance policies, including new home, wind mitigation, security and fire sprinkler systems, and more.

Condo Insurance

Like the homeowner’s insurance, Florida Family Insurance offers a base condo policy that covers walls-in structure coverage, personal property, loss of use, and liability. You can add on a variety of endorsements, including personal property replacement cost, coverage for a condo rented to others, loss assessment, and even golf cart coverage.

Condo policies are designed to cover only the part of the structure that is not covered by the association’s policy on the building.

Rental Property

Also known as a landlord policy, Florida Family has a policy that is designed to cover the needs of a home that is rented out. The base policy covers the structure for all perils aside from those specifically excluded. It also includes loss of rents.

Unusual to this policy is that premises liability is an option and not part of the basic policy. Also optional are personal property coverage and replacement cost personal property coverage, medical payments, and theft coverage. Most of these are included to some degree in rental property policies at other companies. The website states the purpose of making these optional is to create a more flexible policy, but this is still very unusual.

Flood Insurance

Flood insurance is a must for many Florida homeowners, and Florida Family offers it through the National Flood Insurance Program.

How to Get Rates

Online quoting is not available for Florida Family Insurance. This is not surprising for a company that writes only homeowner’s insurance, and only in one state.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation has a rate comparison calculator available on the website that gives sample rates for a variety of insurance companies and counties. We ran a test quote for a $300,000 home value post-2005 construction home. Rates varied greatly based on county, from around $1,400 all the way up to more than $6,000.

This is difficult to compare to other companies without more specific details. Home insurance rates in Florida can be very high, especially in coastal areas, and are hard to compare to other states or on a national level.

How to File Claims

Claims handling is a big deal and very important in a state where hurricane damage devastation can be a part of life. Not surprisingly, Florida Family Insurance has an entire section of the website dedicated to claims, from explaining the insurance claims process to catastrophe response information.

Claims can be reported via a toll-free number, through your agent, or online. The online claims form states that it is for hurricane damage, but also has an option to choose hurricane or non-hurricane damage. Our review was written shortly after Hurricane Irma, which likely impacted how claims were being presented and handled.

Like most insurance companies in a hurricane-prone area, Florida Family has mobile catastrophe response available in the event of a disaster, bringing adjusters and assistance to the affected areas.

While there is a link for claims forms on the website, the only forms offered are a personal property inventory and a lightning affidavit. We did not see any actual claims filing forms for download.

What are the ratings and consumer reviews?

Florida Family Insurance has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), and there are only four customer complaints on file in the past three years. Only one was filed in the past 12 months. Both of the actual customer reviews on the site are positive, leaving a five-star rating.

The Florida Department of Financial Services maintains a customer complaint database for auto and homeowners insurance companies. The most recent available data is for the second quarter of 2017. Florida Family Insurance has a complaints ratio of one complaint to every 31,086 policies in force with a total of three complaints in that time period.

We were unable to find much in the way of customer reviews, with only one negative review on Yelp. The local nature of the company is a likely reason for the lack of reviews on large consumer information sites. Overall, the complaint volume for this company is low.

If you choose to do business with this business, please let the business know that you contacted BBB for a BBB Business Profile

The Bottom Line

Florida Family Insurance is well worth considering for homeowners in the state. They have a good reputation and have weathered many of the difficulties in the Florida homeowner’s market that left limited choices for homeowners insurance, particularly when it comes to major insurance companies. In Florida, 20 years in the homeowner’s insurance market is a solid background, and this company appears to have the financial stability to protect policyholders into the future.

Florida Family Insurance’s  experience and strong financial ratings has earned a reputation as a financially stable insurance company that’s projected to be around for many years to come. A.M. Best, the leading global credit rating agency monitoring the insurance industry, gives Florida Family Insurance an “B++” rating, indicating the carrier is a good choice for insurance customers. A solid rating from A.M. Best assures customers that Florida Family Insurance is capable of offering guaranteed, secure coverage from a trustworthy and reputable carrier.