TALLAHASSEE — As it tries to move customers into the private market after three years of massive growth, the state’s Citizens Property Insurance Corp. could start to see its number of policies decrease.

Citizens President and CEO Tim Cerio said Wednesday that Citizens is now forecasting it will have about 1.3 million policies at the end of 2023, after earlier estimates of 1.5 million to 1.7 million. It had 1.399 million policies as of Friday.

Cerio pointed to what is known as a “depopulation” effort aimed at shifting policies from Citizens to private insurers. Also, Florida has not had any property insurer insolvencies since early this year. In the past, some customers of insolvent insurers have turned to Citizens for coverage.

“Depop [depopulation] is critically important,” Cerio said after a meeting of the Citizens Board of Governors in Tallahassee. “We’ve got to do it for the health of the market.”

The Citizens board met after insurance regulators this month approved rate increases for Citizens customers. In part, rates will increase an average 11.5% for homeowners with the most-common type of policies, known as “multi-peril” policies, according to information provided to the board.

Citizens was created as an insurer of last resort, but its number of policies has exploded during the past three years as private carriers have dropped customers and sought large rate increases because of financial problems.

Many state leaders have long sought to move customers out of Citizens into the private market in part because they could be forced to help pay claims after a major hurricane or multiple hurricanes.

But officials say Citizens often charges lower premiums than private insurers, reducing the incentive for customers to leave Citizens.

Stunned by a Citizens Insurance ‘depopulation’ letter? Here’s what you need to know.

To try to move policies into the private market, lawmakers this year required Citizens customers to accept offers from private insurers if the offers are within 20% of the cost of Citizens premiums.

But Citizens officials expressed concerns Wednesday about making sure customers targeted by the private companies see the offers and make informed decisions.

If offers are higher than the 20 percent threshold, policyholders have to notify Citizens that they want to keep Citizens coverage. The concern is that some customers will not read the notices and will be shifted into the private market at much-higher rates.

“It feels to me like they [carriers] are banking on people not reading their mail,” said Charlie Lydecker, a member of the Citizens Board of Governors.