Orion180, Headquartered in Florida, Now Approved to Do Business in the State

Another insurance firm is expanding into Florida, the state in which it has had its headquarters for several years.

Orion180, founded in 2016, with corporate offices in Melbourne, Florida, has been approved by state regulators as a property and casualty carrier, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation announced Tuesday.

“Today’s announcement marks the third and fourth property and casualty insurers approved to operate in Florida following legislative reforms designed to promote market stability,” Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky’s office said in a bulletin.

Last week, OIR said it had approved Mainsail Insurance Co., a sister firm to Hippo Insurance and Spinnaker Insurance companies, to operate in the state. That followed the approval of Tailrow Insurance Co., part of HCI Group.

Recoop Disaster Insurance, underwritten by Professional Solutions Insurance, also announced it will offer a parametric-type product in Florida and is seeking approval from regulators.

Orion180 will operate as two insurers in Florida: Orion180 Insurance Co. and Orion180 Select Insurance Co. Both are domiciled in Indiana and applied to operate in Florida under an expansion application, OIR said.

The move allows companies to expand into several states, using a uniform certificate of authority application, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners explained. While each “uniform” state will perform its own review of the application, the applicant company does not need to file different applications in different formats.

Orion180 was founded as a tech-heavy company in 2016 by Ken Gregg, who was previously with CNA Insurance and Allianz. Company officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning. In press releases and company information in the past year, the firm has noted that it transitioned from a managing general underwriter to a standalone carrier with the launch of Orion180 Insurance Co.

“To guarantee the sustainability, continued growth of our organization, and to better control the customer experience, it was imperative for the organization to evolve to an independent carrier,” Gregg said in a news release in February.

Three months before that, the company said it was expanding into Georgia and South Carolina, after operating in North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Orion180 has said it has more than 80,000 policies issued, with written premium of $150 million in 2022. It had appointed more than 3,500 agents as of last fall and had secured some $43 million in capital this spring.

A year ago, Orion was approved to build a six-story, $50 million office complex in Melbourne, with part of the site providing retail space and apartments, according to news reports.

The KBRA financial rating firm in June gave Orion180 Insurance Co. a BBB+ financial strength rating, with a stable outlook.

“The rating is positively impacted by the experienced management team, favorable projected capitalization levels, a business plan benefitting from an existing MGA book with good historical loss experience, minimal legacy issues, and reasonable start-up expenses,” the KBRA report noted. “These positive factors are offset by exposure to event risk and reinsurance dependence, product and geographic concentration, and some execution risk as a start-up insurer.”

Policyholder surplus for this year was just over $50 million, a big jump from the previous year. Orion180 Insurance also reported an $807,000 net loss in 2022, but its profit was expected to rise to more than $1.6 million by 2025, KBRA noted.

“KBRA believes that Orion’s transition from using a fronting provider to an underwriter writing on its own paper, allows
for a reasonable market opportunity to successfully execute their business plan,” the rating firm wrote. “However, management must remain disciplined, as they are not bound by the underwriting constraints of a fronting provider.”

Orion180 is not rated by Demotech or AM Best.

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