Reinsurance broker John Gilbert with New York City-based Hoborn Corp. said the losses do not appear to be large enough to "invade the catastrophe programs of most of the larger writers in Florida."

In 1993, Florida created the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund to reimburse qualified insurers for their losses.

Rade Musilin, vice president of the Florida Farm Bureau Insurance Companies, said it was fortunate that just this year the Florida Legislature approved a series of reforms to increase the capacity of the catastrophe fund, and clarified procedures to streamline the claims process for companies in the event of a storm such as Charley.

"Not that we may need it directly, because the storm is not going to be that big. But certainly having the CAT fund enhanced is going to help the recovery effort because companies need the capacity to renew their policies and move forward," he said.

Following Hurricane Andrew in August of 1992, probable maximum loss figures had to be radically revised upward.

"Andrew exposed that there was a severe imbalance between the demand for insurance and the system's capacity to provide it," Mr. Musilin said.

Capacity of the fund was raised to $15 billion from $11 billion, and arrangements were made for the so-called second season, or the year after an event such as Andrew or Charley, during which time the main renewal problems occur.

"When it came to Andrew, it was the year after the hurricane, and not the hurricane, that was the problem," Mr. Musilin said.

The catastrophe fund currently has about $6 billion and with a $4.5 billion retention, "it is not clear if the CAT fund will exhaust all of its cash," Mr. Musilin said.

In the case of Allstate, the No. 2 commercial player in the market, the fund will reimburse the company's Florida subsidiaries for 90 percent of their losses in excess of the estimated retention of $286 million, up to an estimated maximum reimbursement of $922 million.

The main insurer of last resort in the state, the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., is today the second-largest player with about 10 percent of the homeowners market share. Like the catastrophe fund, it came into being in the wake of Andrew.

Mr. Musilin said policyholders should know in several weeks whether or not they will have to pay a special assessment to cover any Charley-related losses.

The nonprofit tax-exempt Citizens was created when the state combined the Florida Windstorm Underwriting Association and the Florida Residential Property and Casualty Joint Underwriting Association into one entity.

Standard & Poor's in an analysis noted that Citizens had raised $750 million in debt this May by issuing high risk account senior-secured bonds. S&P said that when it assigned the bonds an ?A' rating, it noted that the possibility of a catastrophic hurricane event was a potential negative factor.