Do people still flock to the Florida coastline?
A. That has changed fairly dramatically – even through hurricane seasons 2004 and 2005 we had approximately 1,000 people moving here per day. During the height of the recession we actually felt a net migration out of Florida of just a few hundred people a month. Now Florida’s population has stabilised. Q. What are some of the challenges in insuring Floridians, given the exposures and development along the coastline? A. The challenge is two-fold. We are trying to grow capital and minimise catastrophic exposure and that dynamic is put under a lot of pressure if you continue to add more housing stock and continue to grow. The problem is we did not get here overnight. For the past 30 years Florida has advertised itself as a place for cheap land, cheap housing, inexpensive insurance and a great place to live and work. We have to deal with the current housing stock we have, 70% of which were built before modern housing codes. So we have to retrofit those homes and make them more wind resista
