Hendrickson Insurance
Hendrickson Insurance
Hendrickson Insurance places high value home insurance in Naples, Florida for households in Port Royal, Aqualane Shores, Old Naples, Park Shore, the Moorings, Pelican Bay, Pelican Marsh, Grey Oaks, Bonita Bay and Marco Island. It is the Naples chapter of our high net worth insurance in Florida program: the home on the HO5 form with a private-client carrier, NFIP flood with excess above it, the seawall and dock, the umbrella, collections, the yacht, and the business most of these households also own. Dennis Hendrickson is in Sarasota, two hours north; Naples clients are served by phone, email and appointment.
High value home insurance in Naples is a private-client program for a house that costs a million dollars or more to rebuild, on the HO5 open-perils form with Chubb, PURE, AIG Private Client, Vault or Cincinnati. Because Naples is surge country it is built in layers: the home policy with guaranteed or extended replacement cost, NFIP flood kept primary, private excess flood above it, the seawall and dock scheduled, and an umbrella. Citizens is not the fallback: Florida Statute 627.351(6) makes a home with a dwelling replacement cost of 700,000 dollars or more ineligible in most counties.
A Naples waterfront estate is not a bigger version of an inland house. It is a surge risk with a roof on it, and it belongs with carriers and a policy form built for exactly that.
Every submission starts with three facts: when the house was built, what water it sits on, and how high the finished floor is above it.
John Glen Sample began buying the mangrove land south of Old Naples in 1938 and dredged deep-water canals through the late 1940s and 1950s: Gulf-front, canal, cove and Naples Bay lots from Aqualane Shores south to Gordon Pass. Public streets, not gated. Nearly every lot has a seawall and dock, and 1950s originals are giving way to new construction on raised foundations. Surge exposure is as high as anywhere in Collier County.
Developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s as one of the first planned waterfront communities in Naples, on canals cut off Naples Bay between Old Naples and Port Royal. Not gated. Mid-century ranches on original slab elevations sit beside new two-story homes built to current flood elevation: the older houses carry ground-level living space and aging seawalls, the new ones high replacement cost. Ian's surge came up the canals here.
The original town, platted in the 1880s around the pier, with a historic district of cottages and a beachfront on Gulf Shore Boulevard South. Not gated, and entirely west of US 41, where the National Weather Service said Ian's surge covered almost all of Collier County. Cottages and new estates share blocks, so the elevation certificate and the date of the last major renovation drive the placement.
The Moorings began in 1957 when Milton Link bought the 300-acre Crayton Tract; Park Shore followed when Raymond Lutgert bought 760 acres in 1964 and built it out from 1970 to 1983 as Collier County's first planned unit development. Both are open neighborhoods. Homes sit on Moorings Bay and Venetian Bay canals; the beachfront on Gulf Shore Boulevard North is high-rise condominium. Surge reached well inland here in 2022.
In 1972 Coral Ridge Properties, a Westinghouse division, partnered with the Collier family on 2,330 acres seven miles north of downtown, planned around a preserved mangrove estuary between the homes and the beach. Main roads are open; some sub-neighborhoods gate themselves. The mangroves are not an exemption: the National Hurricane Center put 8 to 12 feet of inundation in North Naples, and sensors near Delnor-Wiggins measured more than 9 feet above normal high tide.
Westinghouse Communities broke ground on Pelican Marsh in 1993, the year its community development district was formed; with Tiburon and its two Greg Norman courses at the Ritz-Carlton golf resort, the footprint is about 2,075 acres. Both gated. They sit east of US 41 on lakes and fairways rather than tidal water, so the roof and wind conversation is the whole file, and mid-1990s tile roofs are at the age where carriers ask for permits.
More than 1,200 acres on Airport-Pulling Road, fully gated, with 54 holes of golf and the Estuary as its estate section, on land that came down through Barron Collier's family and was developed from the 1990s on. Inland and off tidal water, so a private-client carrier is most comfortable here on surge and most focused on roof age, opening protection, replacement cost of custom construction and the collections inside. Elevation still sets the flood layer.
Across the Lee County line in Bonita Springs: 2,400 acres opened for sales in 1985 by GNC founder David Shakarian, with 1,400 acres held as preserve, wetlands and lakes. Gated, with a marina and private beach park. Homes front lakes, golf, the Imperial River and Estero Bay. Ian's inundation in Bonita Springs and Bonita Beach ran 8 to 12 feet above ground level and the Imperial River carried surge inland, so river and bay sections are underwritten on elevation.
The Mackle brothers' Deltona Corporation opened modern Marco Island on January 31, 1965 and cut roughly 90 to 100 miles of bulkheaded canals through the island. Open city, apart from the gated Hideaway Beach enclave. Nearly every home is on a seawalled canal or the Gulf, most with a dock and lift, from 1960s originals to new elevated construction. Ian's inundation on Marco ran 4 to 6 feet above ground level, with 256 million dollars in damage.
Ian came ashore on Cayo Costa, north of Fort Myers, on September 28, 2022 as a Category 4 hurricane with estimated 150 mph winds. The National Hurricane Center's report puts maximum inundation at 6 to 9 feet above ground level in Naples, 8 to 12 feet in North Naples, Bonita Springs and Bonita Beach, and 4 to 6 feet from Marco Island through Everglades City. The Naples Pier tide gauge read 6.18 feet above normal high tide before the station was destroyed, and water reached the Naples airport. The National Weather Service described significant to major surge flooding across almost all of Collier County south and west of US 41. Collier County's damage assessment, reported by the Naples Daily News in October 2022, came to 2.2 billion dollars, with 33 buildings destroyed and 3,515 with major damage.
The underwriting changed in four ways. The elevation certificate moved to the top of the file, with the question of living space or equipment at ground level. VE zones, where wave action is expected, are priced and sometimes declined separately from AE zones, and a home mapped AE that flooded like VE is treated on its Ian history. Opening protection and roof attachment became requirements rather than credits. And seawalls, docks and pool cages stopped being assumed and started being scheduled. The hurricane deductible, governed by Florida Statute 627.701, is quoted as a percentage of the dwelling limit; buy the one you could write a check for.
General market positioning, not a promise about any one house.
The benchmark in high value homeowners; the Masterpiece form other programs are measured against. Writes coastal Florida selectively.
A member-owned reciprocal built for high net worth families, strong on valuables, liability and loss prevention.
One of the original high net worth programs, built for large and complex estates and significant collections.
A reciprocal formed for successful families, with a coastal appetite in the right cases. We place Gulf Coast homes here regularly.
Cincinnati Insurance's high net worth program writes home, autos, valuables and umbrella as one account on a highly rated group's balance sheet.
| What matters at claim time | Standard Florida homeowners | Private-client program |
|---|---|---|
| Policy form | HO3: open perils on the house, named perils on contents | HO5: open perils on both |
| Rebuild after a total loss | Capped at the dwelling limit | Guaranteed or extended replacement cost |
| If you do not rebuild | Actual cash value or nothing | Cash settlement option |
| Seawall, dock, lift, pool cage | Excluded or a small sublimit | Scheduled or endorsed to value |
| Flood | Excluded; NFIP maximum 250,000 building, 100,000 contents | NFIP primary plus excess flood to full value |
| Liability | 300,000 to 500,000 | Limits that support a 5 to 25 million umbrella |
All of Florida is a flood zone; the question in Naples is which one and how much water is likely to come. Look the address up on the FEMA Flood Map Service Center, then treat the map as a starting point, because Ian's water did not read it.
The National Flood Insurance Program is the primary layer. Its residential limits are 250,000 dollars on the building and 100,000 on contents, a deductible on a 4 million dollar rebuild, not a solution. It stays anyway: the NFIP is taxpayer-backed and does not non-renew after a claim, while private flood carriers pay a loss and then decline the renewal. So the structure is NFIP first and private excess flood above it to full replacement cost. Private flood is an excess tool here, not a primary one. See Florida flood insurance and excess flood insurance in Florida.
The elevation certificate prices both layers. A licensed surveyor records the finished floor elevation, lowest adjacent grade, equipment elevation and the base flood elevation for the lot. The NFIP no longer requires one to issue a policy, but a floor well above base flood elevation lowers the premium, and the excess carriers ask for it before they quote. Order it before the renewal, not after the decline.
Ian's surge did its most expensive quiet damage below grade. Along Naples Bay and the Marco Island waterways, water pushed behind seawall panels and scoured out the fill, leaving walls that looked intact with voids behind them that showed up months later as settling lawns and sinking pool decks. Docks and lifts came off their pilings.
Standard forms handle these badly. The usual exclusions and sublimits run to docks, piers, bulkheads and seawalls; to screened enclosures and pool cages, which many Florida policies exclude from windstorm or sublimit; and to other structures as a class, typically 10 percent of the dwelling limit. Earth movement exclusions are what a carrier reaches for when the fill washes out but the wall is still standing.
A private-client program schedules the seawall, dock and lift to a stated value, lists the guest house at its own replacement cost, and covers the pool cage for windstorm at replacement cost. Get a marine contractor's estimate on the seawall before the quote; the underwriter will want the wall's age anyway.
Citizens is Florida's insurer of last resort, and for a high value Naples home it is mostly unavailable by statute. Florida Statute 627.351(6)(a)3 provides that a structure with a dwelling replacement cost of 700,000 dollars or more, or a condominium unit with combined dwelling and contents replacement cost of 700,000 or more, is not eligible for Citizens. The exception is a county where the Office of Insurance Regulation finds no reasonable degree of competition, where the line is a dwelling replacement cost under 1 million. A Port Royal or Marco Island estate is over both.
For the Naples homes and condos under the cap, three more rules apply. Citizens requires flood insurance as a condition of coverage under 627.351(6)(aa), phased in by dwelling value. Under 627.351(6)(c)5, a home is not eligible for Citizens if an authorized insurer offers comparable coverage at a premium not more than 20 percent above the Citizens premium. The depopulation program applies the same 20 percent test to takeout offers: a policyholder who receives one within 20 percent of the Citizens renewal is no longer eligible to stay.
When a private-client carrier declines, the next market is excess and surplus lines, at a higher rate with a larger hurricane deductible and tighter roof terms. The way back out of E&S, or out of Citizens on a smaller home: do the work, document it with permits and a new wind mitigation report, and re-submit.
Five, ten or twenty-five million above the home, autos and boat, with underlying limits set so it attaches without a gap. Personal umbrella in Florida.
High limits on the daily drivers so the umbrella sits cleanly on top; agreed value on the collector cars.
Jewelry, art, wine and watches at agreed value, blanket or scheduled, worldwide.
Agreed hull value, liability that matches the umbrella's attachment point, and a named-storm plan for a boat on a Port Royal or Marco canal.
Workers compensation for the housekeeper, captain and estate manager, and household cyber coverage for wire fraud.
The plaza owner who lives in Port Royal is the client this agency was built for. Dennis managed shopping centers before he sold insurance and writes the strip center on the same desk as the house, so the two umbrellas meet with no hole between them.
Florida Statute 627.0629 requires every residential property insurance rate filing to include actuarially reasonable discounts, credits or other rate differentials for fixtures and construction techniques demonstrated to reduce windstorm loss: roof strength, roof covering, roof deck attachment, roof-to-wall strength, opening protection, and the strength of windows, doors and skylights. The credits come off a wind mitigation inspection that documents the roof permit date, deck nailing, roof-to-wall connection, roof shape, secondary water resistance, and impact-rated glass or shutters on every opening. One unprotected opening drops the whole credit.
Roof age is the other half. Private-client carriers will generally keep replacement cost on a roof at ages the volume market will not, but each has an age line and wants the permit. Many Naples roofs are tile, which outlasts shingle but is underwritten on the underlayment beneath it; a twenty-year tile roof on original underlayment is a different conversation than tile re-laid in 2023.
Hendrickson Insurance is in Sarasota, two hours up I-75 from Naples. Placing a private-client home is documents and conversations, and it moves by email and phone; the carrier schedules its own inspection, and Dennis drives down when the account calls for it. See private-client home insurance on Longboat Key and how Gulf Coast high net worth families actually insure.
Dennis reads every application himself and responds within 48 hours, usually the same business day.
Dennis Hendrickson owns Hendrickson Insurance in Sarasota, Florida, FL License E095547, and is the only person who touches your file. Sources used on this page: National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Ian; National Weather Service Miami, Hurricane Ian summary; Naples Daily News, Collier County Ian damage assessment, October 2022; Florida Statute 627.351, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation; Florida Statute 627.0629, windstorm mitigation discounts; Florida Statute 627.701, hurricane deductibles; FloodSmart, the National Flood Insurance Program; FEMA Flood Map Service Center; Port Royal Property Owners Association, history; Pelican Bay Foundation, where it all started; Gulfshore Life, Park Shore history; Urban Land Institute, Bonita Bay case study; Pelican Marsh Community Development District; City of Marco Island, the Mackle Brothers. Last reviewed September 2026.
The statewide guide: the HO5 form, the carriers, collections and umbrella.
02 / FloodNFIP primary, private excess above it, and why the order matters.
03 / LiabilityLiability above the home, autos and boat.
Start your application, or call 941-952-7991 for a private conversation.
Dennis Hendrickson changed a New Jersey state tennis rule at 17 and played four years of Division I tennis at UNC Charlotte. Today he writes both the commercial and the personal insurance for Gulf Coast owners himself, and he works a renewal or a claim the way he played: nothing conceded, no point given away.
When you apply, he answers. Every application goes straight to Dennis. He reads it himself and responds the same business day in most cases, always within 48 hours.
Read the story → Start a quote →