Nationwide to drop Houston policies

Nationwide Property and Casualty Insurance won’t renew 5,300 Houston-area home insurance policies starting Sept. 17, the company said Friday.

The majority of those customers are in Harris County.

“Nationwide continually reviews its business strategy with the goals of maintaining long-term viability for its customers, and the potential for ongoing hurricane activity is there,” said Mike Switzer, a spokesman for the insurer.

The company is positioning itself as experts predict an increased chance of catastrophic damage in the future, he said.

“We are making changes to reflect these realities,” he said.

The historical data used to project future losses, however, pre-dated Hurricane Ike, he said.

Nationwide, which has 180,000 home insurance policyholders statewide, will notify affected customers 90 days before their policy’s expiration, he said.

Switzer encouraged customers to call their agents, who are working to place customers with other companies.

On Feb. 17, the insurer started hiking rates an average of 8 percent as policies came up for renewal.

The pullback signals a deeper withdrawal from the coast for the company.

Fearing stronger and costlier storms, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. in May 2007 dropped windstorm coverage for about 1,000 policyholders. About 600 of those policies were in Galveston County.

The company also decided then not to renew about 870 policies on barrier islands, peninsulas less than two miles across, and property on the mainland within about a half mile of the Gulf of Mexico or its bays.