Tampa Insurance

Insurance in Tampa, Florida

We have described ourselves as a Tampa insurance brokerage for years, and it is accurate. A large part of our book is inside city limits or in the immediate Tampa market, and the office is a short drive down 301 and the Selmon.

Inside the city limits, the rules are administered by the city

This trips up homeowners and contractors constantly. Floodplain management in Hillsborough County is split: if your property is in unincorporated Hillsborough, the county administers it, at (813) 635-5400. If you are inside the City of Tampa, the city does, at (813) 274-3100. Two different offices, two different permitting counters, for questions that sound identical.

It matters when you are repairing or remodeling a home in a flood hazard area, because that is where substantial improvement determinations get made, and a determination can require you to bring the whole structure up to current floodplain standards rather than just fix what broke. Ask the right office before you start work, not after.

Tampa auto is its own problem

Florida is still a no-fault state, and Personal Injury Protection is still required. Read the actual terms, though, because they are narrower than the headline. PIP pays 80 percent of reasonable medical expenses up to a $10,000 limit — but that limit drops to $2,500 unless a qualified provider certifies that you had an emergency medical condition. And you must receive initial care within 14 days of the accident or PIP pays nothing at all. Those two conditions are in section 627.736 of the Florida Statutes and they catch people every year.

What PIP does not do is protect you from the driver who hits you and has nothing. Florida does not require bodily injury liability of every driver, and the practical consequence in a market as dense as Tampa is that uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is carrying more of the load than most people assume.

We look at three things on every Tampa auto quote: whether your UM limits actually match your BI limits, whether stacked UM makes sense for your household, and whether your liability limits are high enough to sit under an umbrella. Raising liability and adding an umbrella is frequently cheaper than people expect, because the umbrella carrier is pricing off limits you already carry.

Small business in Tampa

General liability, business owner’s policies, professional liability and commercial auto, including small business lines through Coterie. If a landlord or a client is asking you for a certificate of insurance, we can usually get one out the same day.

What we write here

Home, condo, renters, auto, flood, umbrella, boat, business and classic vehicle coverage through Hagerty. Call (813) 499-9347.