Lucas’ insurtech Slide gets renewal rights to UPC’s Florida property book

Slide Insurance, the full-stack homeowners property insurtech founded by former Heritage CEO Bruce Lucas, will significantly grow its Florida market footprint, having acquired the renewal rights to over 91,400 Florida homeowners policies from UPC Insurance.

The acquired policies represent $272 million in annual premium, the insurtech said, adding that with this acquisition of UPC Insurance renewal rights, Slide will have total in-force premiums of $560 million.

So, this is an almost doubling in size of Lucas’ still relatively new and mainly Florida focused (for now) property insurance company, on top of which Slide has also acquired some intellectual property from UPC as well.

The transaction will see UPC cancel most of the policies as of today February 1st, and Slide immediately issuing replacements, using UPC’s forms and rates.

After which, Slide will issue renewal policies using Slide’s forms and rates, similar to a previous renewal rights deal with St. Johns last year.

Slide opened in Florida for new business for the first time last month, becoming the first Florida insurer to open for new business in 2023.

As part of this deal with UPC, Slide has acquired UPC’s intellectual property and a dataset of over $1 trillion Total Insured Value (TIV).

After this deal, Slide will have a dataset of around $6 trillion in TIV and over 20 years of historical claims information, supporting its focus on underwriting technology and predictive analytics.

“Big Data has been the company’s key differentiator and a catalyst for both its strategy and stability since the company’s inception,” the company explained.

“We are accelerating our expansion in Florida given the rising demand from homeowners who need better, more affordable insurance options,” Bruce Lucas, CEO and co-founder of Slide stated.

“The December legislation passed by the Florida Legislature has given us confidence that now is the time to expand our presence in the state. I firmly believe that these reforms will work. The reforms apply to all of the newly issued replacement policies, giving Slide a sizeable underwriting advantage over the legacy Florida market.” Lucas also noted that, “UPC has impressive intellectual property and immense data that will add to our data-driven technological advantage.”

The growth achieved by Slide will require reinsurance support and the carriers’ data-driven approach to underwriting and claims should prove a draw for reinsurance capital.

In addition, CEO Luca was in charge at Heritage during the period that carrier used a significant amount of insurance-linked securities (ILS) capital, including through catastrophe bonds, as part of its reinsurance tower.

It will be interesting to see if Slide follows-suit and looks to the capital markets for reinsurance capacity as it increases in scale and exposure in Florida.

As a reminder, UPC Insurance owned carrier United Property & Casualty Insurance Company (United P&C) was placed into run-off in Florida last year.