It was supposed to simplify and speed the process for insurance agents trying to find private coverage for Citizens policyholders, a vital link in depopulating Florida’s oversized insurer of last resort.
But a year after the $36 million Citizens clearinghouse comparative rating sytem, known as EZLynx, was launched, some agents say they’ve grown so frustrated that they’ve given up on it, preferring to avoid dealing with Citizens Property Insurance Corp. as much as possible.
“I’ve said it before: There’s nothing easy about EZLynx,” said Lee Gorodetsky, an insurance agency owner in Weston, Florida, and member of Citizens’ Market Accountability Advisory Committee. “It makes it very difficult to quote. Why should we bother taking policies from Citizens when we can’t write them with someone else?”
Dozens of Florida agents have formed a Facebook group to share complaints and possible workarounds for the system. Recent comments on the social media page range from error messages that are not addressed by the company, to being unable to bridge to insurers, to too many unnecessary questions asked by the system, to delays and incorrect notices of offers from primary carriers. One said that the system gave a notice of an offer of coverage from a private carrier, but when the carrier was contacted, no offer was available.
“Just cut them off and rip that band aide off, then you won’t have to worry about it again. Best decision I’ve made,” one agent commented on Facebook.
“They’ve spent millions on this system and it’s a mess,” said John Gardner, an agency owner in Fort Myers.
A top executive at EZLynx said the company is regularly working on improvements. President Michael Streit told Insurance Journal that roughly 21,000 Florida agents have used the software, and complaints have been relatively few.
“We do a ton of customer feedback sessions. The feedback we’re getting is not overwhelmingly negative,” Streit said.
A customer survey by EZLynx showed that almost 98% of agents quoting Citizens who have questions marked the company’s support as “awesome,” while only 1.4% said it was “not good,” a company spokeswoman noted.
Streit added that Dallas-based EZLynx, part of Applied Systems Inc. since 2021, is one of the largest and fastest-growing insurance management and rate comparison software firms in the country. It has been in business for 22 years, and now has more than 300 member carriers.
But the Citizens clearinghouse package is unlike any other. Florida’s state-created insurer, still the largest property insurance carrier in the state, is unique in the world: Homeowners can sign with Citizens, with its glidepath-limited rates, but only if other carriers’ offered premiums are 20% higher for comparable coverage. Unlike most carriers, Citizens’ stated goal is to get smaller, not grow larger.