South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Editorial
April 28, 2011
Argus Fire & Casualty Insurance Co. has started informing insurance agents that it will start dropping policyholders when they’re up for renewal.
Argus, owned by United Automobile Insurance Company in Miami Gardens, has roughly 15,000 policies. It wrote its agents to say that it’s putting its policies in “run-off.” That means, as one agent explained it, that regulators will allow the company to stay in business for now and let existing policies run their course until renewal.
Officials from Argus and United Automobile could not be reached despite phone calls and the Office of Insurance Regulation could not be reached despite an email to four employees.
Rating agency A.M. Best flagged problems with Argus as early as 2008 and it withdrew its rating with Demotech in March 2010.
Last year, regulators allowed Argus to move roughly 4,000 policies it had taken from Citizens Property Insurance back into the state-backed insurer.
