Latest news with #FloridaOfficeofInsuranceRegulation
Newsweek
4 days ago
- Business
- Newsweek
Florida Insurers Celebrate Record Profits as Premiums Surge For Residents
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Florida home insurers are celebrating their best year in a decade as in 2024 they collected more premiums than paid out claims for the first time since 2015, according to the latest data by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (FLOIR). Regulators' most recent Property Insurance Stability Report shows that Florida's home insurance sector has finally bounced back from a yearslong crisis, even as the state was hit by three devastating hurricanes—Debby, Helene, and Milton—last year. From Losses To Gains The Sunshine State is still in the process of recovering from a tumultuous time for its home insurance sector, as premiums skyrocketed over the past five years while carriers went bankrupt or cut coverage across the state to avoid rising costs. The crisis that unfolded in the state, which saw both insurers and policyholders struggling, was due as much to the growing threat posed by more frequent and more severe natural disasters as to excessive litigation and widespread fraud in Florida's insurance market. In an aerial view, homes along the Gulf of Mexico are seen after they were destroyed when Hurricane Milton passed through the area on October 12, 2024, in Manasota Key, Florida. In an aerial view, homes along the Gulf of Mexico are seen after they were destroyed when Hurricane Milton passed through the area on October 12, 2024, in Manasota Key, Florida.A particularly low point was reached in 2020, when the Florida home insurance industry collectively reported a loss of $1.2 billion. Between 2021 and 2023 alone, nine insurers went insolvent, including three of the ten largest ones operating in Florida. Faced with shrinking availability, homeowners in the state found themselves having to pay higher premiums or otherwise rely on Florida's insurer of last resort, Citizens, for continuous coverage. Citizens ballooned in size between 2020 and 2023, adding hundreds of thousands of policies to its count and raising concerns among experts and lawmakers of what could have happened should the state-backed insurer be unable to pay all their claims. While extreme weather events, like hurricanes, are likely to continue hitting Florida more often and more violently in the coming years due to the impact of climate change, state lawmakers have intervened to stop the other factors contributing to the market's crisis. Between 2022 and 2023, Florida lawmakers reformed the state's tort law so that it would be less profitable and less appealing for attorneys to take disputed insurance settlement cases. They also made contesting an insurer's offer for settling a claim harder to dispute for policyholders in the first place. "Legislative actions addressed the crisis, resulting in a 40 percent year-over-year decline in new property claim lawsuits in 2024," Mark Friedlander, senior director of media relations at the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), previously told Newsweek. "This has led to market stabilization and lower rates. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation reported that average home premiums declined by 0.7 percent statewide in the fourth quarter of 2024, the first drop in nearly a decade." Out Of The Crisis—But Not Out Of Trouble Not only tort reform—Florida has also welcomed new, smaller insurers into its property insurance market in recent months, diversifying and increasing the options available for homeowners. This has happened at the same time as Citizens had dropped tens of thousands of policies to get back to a size that can be considered sustainable. As for the latest count, dating June 30, Citizens had less than 800,000 policies in force. And yet, despite the progress made over the past couple of years to fix Florida's broken home insurance market, homeowners in the state might struggle to draw a sigh of relief, as they are still paying some of the highest premiums in the country. According to Bankrate, the average annual premium for $300,000 dwelling coverage is $5,728 in Florida. That is still much higher than the national average of $2,397. Many homeowners may also see insurers' profits as a personal slight. Out of 10,900 closed claims for residential properties damaged by Hurricane Debby closed, 7,397 were closed without payment, according to data by FLOIR. Out of 67,266 closed claims related to Hurricane Helene, 37,951 were closed without payment. And out of a total of 254,574 closed claims linked to damage caused by Hurricane Milton, 111,150 were closed without payment. There are several reasons a claim can be closed without payment, ranging from the policy not covering the damage claimed, duplicate claims, or the policyholder's decision to withdraw the claim. FLOIR data does not offer details about why these claims were closed without payment.
Yahoo
30-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Florida property insurer gets state OK for 31% rate hike. Does it affect you?
Property insurance in Florida is about to get quite a bit more expensive for customers of a Tampa Bay-based property insurance company. Trusted Resource Underwriters Exchange (also known as TRUE) has received permission from state regulators to hike its base rates by 31.5% for new business and renewals, backdated to April. That rate increase of nearly a third — an average hike of $1,357 — for its nearly 20,000 policyholders will be standard across the state, according to 2,000 pages of documents on the filing. That boost for the insurer, which is about the 50th largest among the state's 87 active insurers, is in stark contrast to most of the Florida property insurance market. Most of the state's property insurers have been reporting rates that are mostly flattening or increasing only slightly in 2024 and 2025 after a tumultuous period. Before, between 2019 and 2023, many Florida insurers implemented double-digit increases, and a spate of them became insolvent or retreated from the Florida market. Expert: There likely was a 'real need' for the rate hike in Florida property insurance TRUE's approval from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation follows a June 17 hearing on jacking up rates. State regulators schedule rate hearings when insurers file for increases of 15% or more over the previous year. 'There's a lot of attributes and variables that go into what the (insurance) rate should be,' said Paul Handerhan, founder of the Federal Association for Insurance Reform. 'The OIR is doing its best to keep rates down, so if the (regulators') office approved that increase, there was a real need for it. 'Typically, the office wouldn't approve that kind of rate increase unless they really needed it to meet their obligations,' Handerhan added. 'Obviously, the people who are getting the rate increase are not going to like it.' Caused by hurricane coverage The filing shows that the hurricane coverage is where the hit is coming — it's increasing 50% while the non-hurricane coverage is going up 9%. TRUE calls itself a 'new company that is significantly growing' in the rate filing. AM Best, one of the country's largest and most trusted credit rating agencies, announced a downgrade in TRUE's rating in 2024. The downgrade — and TRUE's subsequent withdrawal from its voluntary ratings — came shortly after American Family Insurance Group, a Fortune 500 company based in Wisconsin, sold a majority of the insurer's shares to Gallatin Point Capital, based in Greenwich, Connecticut. Andy Kasten, owner of the Fort Lauderdale company Creative Financial Property & Casualty Group, said the company is among those he can offer his clients, but he hasn't seen quotes that are competitive in the tri-county insurance market. He's seen it work better for new homes on the Treasure Coast. Florida homeowners pay some of the highest premiums in the country, due to the state's vulnerability to hurricanes and the cost of having backup funds available in the event of catastrophic-level claims. Recently, though, the state's insurance market overall appears to have entered a period of calm, widely attributed to the changes in the state's tort laws passed by the Legislature primarily in 2022, which removed much of the incentive for policyholders to sue their insurer. More: $50 million pay for property insurance executives raises alarm about companies failing At the June 17 hearing, representatives for TRUE say it really needs nearly twice the rate increase it was asking for. Anthony Scavongelli, its chief executive, blamed the need for the increase on last year's string of hurricanes, the insurer's Florida-only book of business that has little risk spread around and the cost of the backup capital TRUE needs to insure itself against catastrophic claims. In addition, the company's previous management had not kept its rates accurate for those conditions, Scavongelli said. "Our analysis indicated support for a nearly 60% rate increase driven largely by hurricane and reinsurance costs,' Scavongelli said during a virtual hearing. Anne Geggis is the insurance reporter at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at ageggis@ support our journalism. Subscribe today This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida property insurer gets OK for property insurance rate hike Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Insurance costs edge higher for Florida homeowners and condo owners
The upward rise in costs for homeowner insurance in Florida resumed during the first quarter of 2025, with average premium costs edging higher after dipping slightly in late 2024, new data released by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation shows. The average premium paid by owners of single-family homes in Florida increased by 0.3% — climbing from $3,646 to $3,658 — between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, according to a South Florida Sun Sentinel comparison of figures released in the office's quarterly Residential Market Share Report. Condo unit owners saw their costs increase by 0.8%, from $1,714 to $1,729 during the period, the data shows. Homeowner insurance costs fell by 0.7% in fourth quarter of 2024 Home insurance costs in Florida spiked in third quarter. Are more increases on the way? Condo association insurance costs doubled since 2022, new data shows Your insurance costs won't climb so high this year. All bets are off if we get a lot of hurricanes. Since the enactment of reforms in 2022 aimed at sharply reducing litigation costs for insurers, average premiums have increased 30.7% for homeowners and 28.8% for condo unit owners. The first-quarter hikes followed cost decreases of less than 1% for homeowner policies and 1.7% for condo unit policies during the fourth quarter of 2024. That was the only quarter with cost decreases since the release of the reports began in 2022. The office released the latest data without comment and Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky did not respond to an email from the Sun Sentinel. An office spokeswoman said she did not believe that Yaworsky would be able to address the increases prior to this news article's publication. Mark Friedlander, senior director of media relations for the industry-funded Insurance Information Institute, attributed the increase to 'higher replacement costs due to inflationary impacts of construction materials and labor.' He also pointed out that the 'slight increase is far below most other hurricane-prone coastal states, which are experiencing double-digit premium increases.' The data showing the cost increases for Florida consumers followed the release of an analysis by insurance ratings firm AM Best noting improvements in the state's insurance market. In addition to achieving, in 2024, the market's first collective underwriting profit in eight years, the AM Best report cited the emergence of 13 new private-market insurers, stabilizing premiums and reinsurance costs, and a sharp reduction in policies held by state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state's so-called insurer of last resort. The improvements were made possible, AM Best said, by tort reforms enacted in 2022 and 2023 by the Florida Legislature and governor to reduce runaway litigation costs that were driving losses within the industry. During debate in the Legislature over the reforms, insurance insiders predicted that costs for consumers, then rising sharply, would stabilize or even be reduced after litigation that was underway had a few years to work its way through the courts. Prior to the start of the 2025 legislative session, Yaworsky joined Gov. Ron DeSantis at a news conference touting the number of insurers that submitted requests for lower or unchanged rates. Critics, however, said the reforms have gone too far, adding to insurer profits while leaving policyholders with less leverage over claims disputes. A bill was backed by plaintiffs attorneys that would have reinstated requirements for insurers that lose claims disputes to pay plaintiffs' legal fees. It passed the House but was not advanced in the Senate. Insurance premiums increased for 41 of 61 carriers with 1,000 or more policies, according to the analysis. The Cincinnati Insurance Co. charged the largest premium increase — 45.7% — among the group of Florida-registered insurers. While its policy count decreased from 1,631 to 1,009, its average premium increased from $11,014 to $16,044. Average risk covered by the Fairfield, Ohio-based company is $2.8 million. Truck Insurance Exchange's 2,390 policyholders saw the second-largest increase, 16.1%, as premiums swelled from $2,059 to $2,390. Premium costs for 20 companies increased by less than 2% and customers of 17 companies saw their premiums decrease, on average, between 0.2% and 9.3% Companies with lower premiums included Florida-based Edison, Florida Peninsula, Security First, Monarch National, American Integrity, ASI Preferred, Safe Harbor, Orange and Safeport. Costs for Citizens customers declined by 1.9%, from $3,348 to $3,283. The Sun Sentinel's calculations excluded two companies from the fourth and first quarters and a third company from the first quarter. Fourth-quarter data reported by two of the companies contained obvious glitches that would have skewed results. The third company did not report its data in the fourth quarter but resumed reporting in the first quarter. Including that company's data in the analysis would have made the first-quarter increases appear artificially large. Condo associations saw relief for the third straight quarter as premiums fell by 5.3% following decreases of 2.5% and 3.0%. Condo association premiums had increased by an average 103% between June 2022 and June 2024 amid concerns about tightening inspection and maintenance requirements. Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071 or by email at rhurtibise@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Florida slaps property insurance company with $100K fine over Hurricane Ian claims
Video above: 'Broke' insurance companies moved money, report finds TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Florida insurance regulators fined a property insurance company $100,000 for its mishandling of claims in the wake of Hurricane Ian in 2022. According to a consent order document provided by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, Centauri Specialty Insurance Company failed to utilize properly appointed adjusters and provide a disclosure statement when providing payments on claims that were not the full and final payment. Manatee dies while receiving medical care at Florida state park: report Insurance regulators pointed to 168 instances where the company used insurance adjusters who were not properly appointed. Florida law requires them to be licensed and appointed. The office said that Centauri 'did not provide the particular disclosure statement when providing a payment on a claim that was not the full and final payment in 141 instances.' Centauri was fined $100,000, plus $2,000 in administrative costs. As part of the agreement, the company acknowledged it could face administrative penalties if caught violating the terms of the consent order in the future. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
GA lawmaker asks for investigation to see if major insurance companies are hiding profits
A Georgia state Senator is asking for the state's Insurance Commissioner to investigate whether major insurance companies are using affiliate companies they own to hide profits. State Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes sent a letter to Insurance Commissioner John King asking that his 'office undertake a comprehensive investigation into Georgia's insurance market.' 'Working families cannot continue to afford rising premiums, and we need to find out what the real cause of these rising premiums are, and whether or not it's because insurance companies are running a shell game,' Islam Parkes told Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray. The letter comes after the release this month in the state of Florida of an analysis ordered by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation back in 2022. The report examined the relationship between many insurance companies in Florida and affiliate companies they own and use to provide everything from accounting and underwriting to claims investigation. TRENDING STORIES: Gwinnett 16-year-old missing for over 1 year found safe Fani Willis, Fulton DA's office given 30 days to pay $54K for open records act violations Metro Atlanta teen accepted to 58 colleges, earning $1 million in scholarships Republicans and Democrats last week in a Florida House of Representatives hearing expressed concerns about the findings that indicated that insurance companies in Florida may be using those affiliates to hide profits as they raise rates. 'Our purpose today is to find out if insurance companies have been allegedly ripping us off ripping the citizens of Florida off,' said Florida Republican state Rep. Mike Caruso. The Florida report found that while the insurance companies they examined claimed losses of $432 million, their affiliate companies made $1.8 billion in income. 'I think we'd be fools to think similar practices aren't happening in the state of Georgia,' Islam Parkes said. In his response letter, King said his office regulates those agreements between insurance companies and their affiliates and that the 'review of these agreements is performed on a case-by-case basis to determine what is 'fair and reasonable.'' In a statement to Channel 2 Action News, King's office says affiliate agreements in Georgia require prior approval by the Insurance Commissioner before going into effect and require regular review. The statement also said Georgia's market is different than Florida's, with fewer affiliate companies. 'Florida's insurance market presents unique challenges which are not prevalent in Georgia. Specifically, due to the prevalence of intense natural disasters in the state, many if not most of the larger insurers seek to form a state-specific insurer in Florida. In the Georgia property marketplace, most larger insurers operate under the national corporate structure, with premiums paid directly to the national insurer, rather than through that of a subsidiary and then through to the parent insurer,' an Insurance Commissioner spokesperson wrote. Rising insurance costs in Georgia are one of the main reasons Gov. Brian Kemp has cited for pushing for tort reform this legislative session. 'As a small business owner for 40 years now, I've seen it in my own escalating insurance costs. Insurers that are pulling out of the marketplace so that people can't have access to insurance even if they have the ability to pay for it. So, we are simply trying to stabilize the market,' Kemp said. But Islam Parkes counters there should be more data about those insurance companies' fee structures before any laws are changed. 'What are the reasons that auto insurance, homeowners' insurance is going up? We need to make sure that these insurance companies are not taking advantage of Georgians,' Islam Parkes said.
