Legislative reforms’ impact ‘simply irrefutable’
Florida’s property insurance market continues its rebound, reflecting improving financial conditions, as more carriers join the market; Citizens Property Insurance policy count drops below 800,000 amid other encouraging signs; plus a rare rate hearing for a Florida reciprocal insurance company. It’s all in this week’s Property Insurance News.
Improving Market: Gallagher Re is out with its 2024 Florida Market Watch report, a very comprehensive look at how the state’s property insurance market made out last year. The report looks at market performance across three main subgroups: Florida Specialists (domestic, Florida-based carriers), Citizens Property Insurance, and ANTSP (Allstate, Nationwide, Travelers, State Farm, and Progressive). “In 2024, market dynamics reflected improving financial conditions for Florida-focused insurers alongside notable shifts in premium and surplus trends,” per the report. Florida Specialists reported a net underwriting gain of $235.6 million and an after-tax net income of $537.1 million. All subgroups, other than Citizens, saw growth in direct premium written in comparison to 2023. Factoring in Citizens, the report notes while the market posted a net underwriting loss of $730.5 million, it still had positive net income of $177.2 million in 2024. Total direct premium increased 9.6% from 2023, attributed to rate adjustments and growing policy count. Surplus grew by 7% to $13.1 billion.
Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky, in a Friday news release announcing that two more insurance companies have joined the market, wrote “Our market is becoming more and more competitive, and we continue to see great progress in rate requests with over 120 residential filing requests for rate decreases or 0% increases so far this year.” A total of 14 new companies have joined the market since the winter 2022/2023 legislative reforms. Yaworsky noted that according to three recent publications (S&P Global, Insurance Information Institute and Lending Tree), Florida had the lowest average homeowners rate increase in the nation in 2024, with an average statewide increase of only 1%.
Citizens Depopulating: Another sign of Florida’s private market growth is the depopulation of the state-created Citizens Property Insurance. Its policy count has dropped to under 800,000 for the first time in four years, with 770,592 policies as of June 20, a 36% drop from this same time last year. That figure is 43,000 fewer policies than the week before, due to the June depopulation take-out of policies by private carriers. Citizens’ market share has shrunk from a high of 17% in Q3 of 2023 to just 9% today. Citizens President & CEO Tim Cerio told its board last week that they are now forecasting to end 2025 with just under 654,000 policies and $255 billion in total insured value. He provided insightful Citizens’ and Florida industry metrics on depopulation, rates, premiums, litigation, net income, and net underwriting gain, with data that “is just simply irrefutable that the reforms passed have had a tremendous impact on improving this market.”
You can read more in our full LMA report on the board meeting here, including progress on its new clearinghouse for policies, and its recently begun dispute resolution program through the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH) that the Board just extended to commercial policies.
Rate Hearing: Trusted Resource Underwriters Exchange (TRUE), a reciprocal insurance company originally established by American Family in 2020 went before Florida regulators in a June 17 rate hearing. TRUE is seeking a statewide average 31.5% increase in its Homeowners Multi-Peril (HO-3) and a 0% increase in its HO-5 Homeowners Multi-Peril, impacting 4,646 policies.
The company’s representatives admitted that TRUE hadn’t made an annual filing with regulators since 2022 due to changes in management and that “unfortunately found ourselves significantly behind in rate adequacy,” per its CEO. Its big increase “was driven largely by hurricanes and reinsurance costs.” Representatives faced direct questions on non-compliance with Florida insurance law and their knowledge of components of a rate filing. You can read more in our full LMA report on the rate hearing here.
LMA Newsletter of 6-30-25
