Allstate subsidiary, Castle Key Insurance Company, has request that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation allow it to increase its homeowners insurance premiums by 33%.  Florida’s Insurance Consumer Advocate, Sean Michael Shaw, has stated that Castle Key only needs a 14.4% increase. 

The rate request is now in the hands of the Florida OIR which has gone head-to-head with Allstate before. Two years ago the OIR and Allstate reached an agreement to settle a long dispute over regulators’ requests for more documents related to a rate request. At one point the OIR suspended Allstate’s license to do business in Florida.

Allstate paid $5 million to resolve legal issues from the argument and agreed to lower homeowners insurance rates by 5.6 percent. The insurer also agreed to write 100,000 new policies by November 2011.

Allstate then renamed its Florida subsidiaries to Castle Key in order to make it clear they were separately capitalized from Allstate Insurance Co.