Glossary · LeadLobster

Florida market structure

The carriers, programs, and reinsurance arrangements that shape what private insurers can write — and at what price — in Florida.

Citizens Property Insurance · also Citizens: The Florida state-backed insurer of last resort. Created to provide coverage when private carriers won't write or renew a policy in a given market. Eligibility, rates, and coverage limits are set by state statute, which is why agents reference Citizens as a baseline rather than a competitor.
Takeout carrier: A private insurance carrier that picks up policies from Citizens during a depopulation cycle. Takeout offers are presented to the policyholder, who can accept the move or decline and stay with Citizens.
Depopulation: The structured process of transferring policies off the state-backed insurer of last resort onto private carriers. Run periodically when private-carrier appetite improves; the volume of policies moved varies cycle to cycle.
CAT fund · also Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund: The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund — a state-administered reinsurance fund that backstops private carriers against catastrophic hurricane losses. Sits behind every personal-lines carrier writing in the state. The CAT fund's attachment point and reimbursement rate shape what private carriers can profitably write each season.
Reinsurance: Insurance purchased by an insurance company. Carriers cede portions of their risk to reinsurers; reinsurance cost is one of the largest line items in any Florida carrier's rate filing.
Rate filing: The formal process by which a carrier requests permission to change premium rates, deductible structure, or territorial pricing. Filings can be approved, denied, or withdrawn, and the outcome can move available rate across an entire territory in a single event.
Surplus lines: Property coverage written by carriers not licensed in the state of risk, used when admitted carriers have declined. Higher rate, more flexible underwriting, no state guaranty-fund backstop if the carrier fails.

Homeowner coverage forms

The standardized policy forms and coverage parts that make up a Florida homeowner policy.

HO-3: The most common homeowner policy form. Open-perils on the dwelling, named-perils on personal property. The default starting point for most Florida single-family-home quotes.
HO-6: The condo-owner policy form. Covers the “studs in” — interior finishes, personal property, loss of use, and personal liability — while the HOA master policy covers the building shell.
HO-8: A modified-replacement policy form for older homes where full replacement cost exceeds market value. Pays actual cost to repair, not full reconstruction.
Coverage A — Dwelling: The amount of insurance on the physical structure of the home. Set at the cost to rebuild, not the market value.
Coverage B — Other Structures: Detached structures on the property: garages, sheds, fences, in-ground pools. Defaults to 10% of Coverage A on most HO-3 forms and can be increased.
Coverage C — Personal Property: Belongings inside the home. Typically 50–70% of Coverage A by default; written on either replacement-cost or actual-cash-value terms.
Coverage D — Loss of Use / ALE · also Additional Living Expenses, ALE: Additional living expenses if a covered loss makes the home uninhabitable. Pays for temporary housing, meals above normal, pet boarding, and storage during repair.
Coverage E — Personal Liability: Liability coverage if the policyholder is sued for bodily injury or property damage at the residence. $300K limits are common; higher limits are available.
Coverage F — Medical Payments: No-fault medical reimbursement for guests injured on the property, regardless of liability. Typically $1K–$5K limits.
Replacement Cost Value (RCV): Settlement basis that pays the full cost to replace damaged property with new of like kind and quality, with no deduction for depreciation.
Actual Cash Value (ACV): Settlement basis that pays replacement cost minus depreciation. Common on roofs older than 10–15 years; many Florida carriers now write roofs on ACV by default.
Hurricane / Named Storm deductible: A separate deductible applied to losses from a named tropical system. Usually expressed as a percentage of Coverage A (typically 2–10%) rather than a flat dollar amount.
All-Other-Perils (AOP) deductible: The flat-dollar deductible applied to non-hurricane claims. Typically $1K–$5K.
Sinkhole coverage: Coverage for ground subsidence due to underground voids. Optional in Florida and excluded from base HO-3 forms. Catastrophic ground-cover collapse is required by statute and included separately.

Property inspections

The standardized inspection types that drive whether a Florida home is bindable, on what terms, and at what premium.

Wind mitigation inspection · also wind-mit, wind mit: A standardized inspection documenting roof shape, roof-deck attachment, roof-to-wall connection, opening protection, and similar features that reduce wind damage. Required for the Florida wind-mit premium discount; produces a credit on the dwelling premium when filed.
4-point inspection: A short inspection covering roof, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. Required by most Florida carriers when binding coverage on homes over 30–40 years old.
Roof age / condition criteria: Underwriting thresholds carriers use to decide whether a roof is acceptable, and on what terms (RCV or ACV). Acceptance windows vary by carrier and roof material — asphalt shingle, tile, and metal each carry different appetite curves.

Flood

The vocabulary of flood-zone mapping, federal vs private flood coverage, and the documents that move a property between risk categories.

NFIP · also National Flood Insurance Program: The federal flood insurance program. Sold through participating carriers and direct. Coverage limits are statutorily capped at $250K dwelling and $100K contents — homes above those values typically need supplemental private flood.
Private flood: Flood coverage written by private carriers outside the federal program. Often higher limits, sometimes broader coverage (loss-of-use, basement contents), and increasingly competitive on price for low-to-moderate risk addresses.
Flood zone: A mapped designation of flood risk for a specific address. Common Florida zones: X (minimal risk), AE (1% annual flood risk), VE (1% risk with wave action), A (1% risk, unstudied elevation).
Base Flood Elevation (BFE): The elevation above sea level to which a 1% annual-chance flood is expected to rise at a given location. Drives flood rate and whether construction is pre- or post-FIRM compliant.
Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA): Any zone where flood insurance is federally required for federally backed mortgages. AE, VE, and A zones are all SFHA.
Letter of Map Amendment (LOMA): A formal determination that a structure is above the BFE and therefore should not be in the SFHA, despite the map placing it inside. Removes the mandatory-flood-insurance requirement.
Letter of Map Revision (LOMR): A formal revision to a flood map based on physical changes — drainage improvements, elevation work, or similar. Like a LOMA but tied to a structural change rather than a measurement correction.
Pre-FIRM construction: A structure built before the community's first Flood Insurance Rate Map went into effect. Eligible for legacy subsidized rates that are being phased out under Risk Rating 2.0.
Post-FIRM construction: A structure built after the community's first Flood Insurance Rate Map. Rated based on elevation relative to BFE.

Property records

The recorded-document vocabulary that establishes title, ownership, and the chain of custody on a Florida residential property.

Deed transfer: A recorded change in real-property ownership, filed with the county clerk of court at closing. The public-record event that establishes a new homeowner of record on title.
Recorded deed: A deed transfer that has been formally filed and time-stamped into county property records. Becomes searchable public information once recorded.
Grantor: The party transferring property out, named on the deed.
Grantee: The party receiving the property, named on the deed. The new homeowner of record.
Title transfer: The legal change of property ownership, evidenced by the recorded deed.
Closing date: The date the property transaction is completed and the deed is signed. Recording typically follows within hours to days; insurance binding generally occurs the morning of closing.
Mortgage origination: The creation of a new mortgage at closing. Recorded as a lien against the property in the same record set as the deed.
HOA (Homeowners Association): The governing body for a planned community or condo complex. Drives the master-policy coverage that surrounds an HO-6, and HOA dues sometimes include carrier-billed insurance assessments.
Fee simple: The most complete form of property ownership: the owner holds the property indefinitely with full transfer rights, subject only to laws and encumbrances.

Sales & compliance

The regulatory frame around outbound insurance prospecting in the United States, and the gates a clean lead has to clear before an agent dials.

TCPA · also Telephone Consumer Protection Act: The federal law governing telephone marketing, prerecorded messages, and auto-dialers. Statutory damages of $500–$1,500 per violating call; the dominant compliance constraint on outbound insurance prospecting.
TCPA-safe: A contact record that satisfies TCPA requirements before an agent calls: live consent, screened against active opt-out lists, traceable consent timestamp. Used in the LeadLobster product to indicate a lead's phone number meets these gates before delivery.
DNC (Do Not Call) registry: The federal Do Not Call list, plus state-level equivalents (Florida maintains its own). Inclusion blocks most marketing calls; established business relationship and express written consent are the primary carve-outs.
DNC scrubbing: The process of removing phone numbers on active DNC lists from a calling list before any outreach. Required to be repeated periodically because lists change.
Express written consent: A signed, dated statement from a prospect agreeing to receive marketing calls — including those delivered via auto-dialer. The strongest TCPA defense and required for prerecorded calls to wireless numbers.
Auto-dialer (ATDS): Equipment that automatically dials phone numbers from a stored list. The TCPA treats ATDS calls with stricter consent requirements than manually dialed calls; the definition has been narrowed by court rulings (Facebook v. Duguid) but remains a high-risk category.

Lead-generation vocabulary

The terms that distinguish one insurance lead product from another, used here in their generic industry sense.

Exclusive lead: In insurance lead-generation, a lead sold once to a single agent. Contrasts with shared leads, which the vendor sells to multiple agents simultaneously. Exclusivity is the primary product distinction in modern P&C lead-gen markets.
Shared lead: A lead sold to multiple agents — commonly 3 to 8 — by the same vendor. Lower per-unit cost than exclusive, but the first-to-call dynamic compresses contact-rate economics for every buyer.
Lead source: In lead-generation, the data origin point a vendor uses to identify prospects. Different sources produce different lead quality, contact rates, and conversion economics; the term is industry-generic and not specific to any one vendor's approach.
Lead score: A numeric ranking of lead quality based on attributes the vendor has chosen to weight. Higher scores generally correlate with higher contact and conversion rates, but the underlying weighting varies by vendor.
Bind rate: The percentage of contacted leads who actually purchase a policy. The cleanest single metric for evaluating any lead source, because it captures both lead quality and the agent's working approach.
Conversion rate: Often used interchangeably with bind rate in insurance lead-gen, though strictly speaking conversion can mean any forward step in the funnel (contact → quote → bind). Specify context when comparing across vendors.

Florida market timing

The seasonal and policy-cycle terms that drive when Florida homeowners are shopping, when carriers are filing, and when reinsurance prices reset.

Hurricane season: June 1 through November 30, when North Atlantic tropical-cyclone activity is statistically concentrated. Drives carrier appetite, reinsurance pricing, and homeowner shopping behavior across the entire Florida personal-lines market.
Renewal window: The 30–60 days before a policy's anniversary date, when most insureds receive their renewal notice and revisit pricing. The window where the largest share of carrier switches happen each year.
Re-shopping window: In residential property insurance broadly, the period after a homeowner first binds a policy during which they are statistically most likely to revisit pricing. The phenomenon exists across markets; the specific duration varies by region, carrier mix, and the bundling structure used at closing.