Property and casualty insurance holding company, United Insurance Holdings Corp. (UPC Insurance), recently announced first-quarter 2021 current year catastrophe losses of $24 million, pre-tax and net of expected reinsurance recoveries.
UPC Insurance’s Q1 2021 cat loss bill comes in at approximately $19 million after-tax, and includes claims from winter storm Uri, seven additional PCS cat events and two non-PCS cat events.
At the same time, the company also experienced a notable rise in the volume of litigated claims from Florida homeowners’ during the opening quarter of the year.
In fact, UPC Insurance states that this led to actual loss reserve development exceeding its expectations across most accident years.
In light of the rise in the expected frequency of litigation in the state of Florida, the insurer plans to strengthen its reserves for unpaid loss and loss adjustment expenses on prior accident years by $30 million ($24m after-tax) for the first-quarter of the year.
Brad Martz, President & Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of UPC Insurance, commented: “We anticipated the unfavorable trend of litigated homeowners claims in Florida continuing in 2021, but the actual number of new lawsuits filed during the first quarter was extremely disappointing and requires us to re-estimate our ultimate loss liabilities due to the overall increase in loss severity.”
