Organization, Consolidation and Presentation

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2011

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements

ORGANIZATION, CONSOLIDATION AND PRESENTATION

(a)Business

We incorporated as a blank-check company in May 2007 under Delaware law, and became a publicly-traded company in October 2007. In September 2008, we acquired an insurance holding company and its subsidiaries, and changed our name to United Insurance Holdings Corp. (UIHC).

Through our wholly-owned subsidiaries, we write and service property and casualty insurance policies in Florida, South Carolina and Massachusetts. We incorporated three of our subsidiaries under Florida law, including United Property and Casualty Insurance Company (UPC), which writes insurance policies; United Insurance Management, L.C. (UIM), the managing general agent that manages substantially all aspects of UPC's business; and Skyway Claims Services, LLC (SCS), a claims adjusting company that provides services to UPC. In April 2011, we formed a fourth subsidiary, UPC Re. Operating as a reinsurer under the laws of the Cayman Islands, UPC Re provides reinsurance protection to UPC.

The insurance regulatory authorities in Florida, South Carolina and Massachusetts have authorized UPC to write homeowner and dwelling property and casualty lines, as well as flood coverage under the National Flood Insurance Program. In 2011, the insurance regulatory authority in Rhode Island authorized UPC to write in that state, and UPC has applied to insurance regulatory authorities in two additional states to write property and casualty lines. Though the insurance regulatory authority has authorized UPC to write a commercial line of business in Florida that includes auto and multi-peril coverage, we voluntarily discontinued writing that line as of May 31, 2009.

We operated exclusively in Florida until July 1, 2010, when we began writing our policies in South Carolina. We also assumed a book of business in South Carolina from Sunshine State Insurance Company as of July 1, 2010, representing $5,294 of in-force homeowner premium. On November 1, 2011, we began writing policies in Massachusetts. We expanded outside of Florida to reduce our geographic concentration of exposure to catastrophic losses and our geographic concentration of credit risk.

We write our policies utilizing our agency network, though we occasionally supplement those writings by assuming policies from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (Citizens), an insurer supported by the State of Florida.

We conduct our operations under one business segment.

(b)Consolidation and Presentation

We prepare our financial statements in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). While preparing our financial statements, we make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosures of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements, as well as reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. Accordingly, actual results could differ from those estimates. Reported amounts that require us to make extensive use of estimates include our reserves for unpaid losses and loss adjustment expenses, reinsurance recoverable, deferred policy acquisition costs, and investments. Except for the captions on our Consolidated Balance Sheets and Consolidated Statements of Income, we generally use the term loss(es) to collectively refer to both loss and loss adjustment expenses.

We include all of our subsidiaries in our consolidated financial statements, eliminating all significant intercompany balances and transactions during consolidation.

We reclassified certain amounts in the 2010 and 2009 financial statements to conform to the 2011 presentation. These reclassifications had no impact on our results of operations, cash flows or stockholders' equity as previously reported.