Four months before hurricane season starts — and before the full financial impact of last year’s tumultuous storm season lands — Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared victory over the state’s property insurance woes.
DeSantis said Florida’s battered insurance market is stabilizing. During a press conference at Florida International University in Miami on Wednesday, Feb. 5 he cited a 5.6% average decrease in premium rates for hundreds of thousands of households insured through the state’s insurer of last resort as the chief evidence. After years of double-digit increases, about 20% of Citizens Property Insurance Corp. policyholders throughout the state are going to see their premiums drop.
State regulators said Thursday, Feb. 6, that these rates for 2025 are the first significant decrease in Citizens’ rates in 15 years.
Still, the drop will be just a fraction of the increases that the state’s property owners have seen in their insurance rates over the past three years.
In addition to that decrease for some policies held by the state’s largest insurer, DeSantis cited other evidence for the improving health of the insurance market in Florida: new companies underwriting property risks, fewer lawsuits filed against insurance companies, more households with insurance coverage and stable or decreasing insurance premiums for customers with insurance from private companies.
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Insurance companies, DeSantis said, “are going to pass on to you what the Legislature has done — brought in stability … You’re going to see more people willing to write more policies here and that just means more choices for you.”
Floridians have seen Citizens premium increases for past three years
The news about Citizens, a state-backed entity that offers coverage to Floridians unable to get policies from private insurance firms, follows years of double-digit increases. It also starkly reversed a request Citizens submitted to state regulators during the summer to increase its premiums by an average of 14%. In previous years, the premiums charged by Citizens, which insures more Florida properties than any other company, increased an average 10% in 2022; 10.7% in 2023; and 12.3% in 2024.
Nonetheless, DeSantis claimed the positive developments are the result of a slew of reforms state lawmakers passed, starting in 2019, and that climaxed in 2022 when the Republican-dominated Legislature changed the rules governing insurance lawsuits. The new rules ended adding attorney fees into any lawsuit settlements, thus industry observers agree, ending much of the incentive for attorneys to take those cases and customers’ ability to challenge their insurers’ proposed payments for fixing home damage in court.
“People are now looking at this in Florida and saying that Florida’s market has stabilized,” DeSantis said. “Compare California. California insurers are leaving California. They’re fleeing. They don’t want to be there because the government’s policies have been very, very destructive. Who knows what’s going to happen after these fires?”
Citizens had requested a 14% average rate increase
The announcement that Citizens’ rates are decreasing appeared to catch Citizens officials by surprise, however. Citizens’ proposed rate increase averaging 14% across the state was still officially under consideration by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation as DeSantis announced Citizens’ decreasing premiums at midweek.
“I am still awaiting the final order from the Office of Insurance Regulation,” Citizens’ spokesman Michael Peltier wrote in an email when asked about DeSantis’s Wednesday announcement.
Thursday, though, Peltier issued another release saying the order from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation had been received and would be instituted as the law requires.
“As Gov. DeSantis stated, the 2025 rates reflect the many positive developments that have taken place in the Florida property insurance market since our original recommendations were filed,” Peltier wrote in an email.
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Citizens submitted the now-discarded 14% increase in rates last summer and a decision was initially expected in August. Thursday’s decision shows that state regulators rejected the Citizens’ governor-appointed board members’ rationale for requesting an increase.
Rates, company officials agreed in August, before two catastrophic hurricanes hit the state, needed to be in line with the estimated risk from the policies on its books in addition to being at a level at which the state-backed company is not competing with the private market.
It appears, however, that DeSantis believes things have changed, particularly in the southeast part of the state. His announcement spotlighted that in Miami-Dade County nearly 75% of Citizens policyholders are going to see their Citizens premium drop by 6.3% this year. In Broward County, 52% of policyholders, he said, will see a 5.3% average drop in premiums, and, in Palm Beach County, nearly 20% of Citizens’ customers will see an average drop of 5.2%.
“I just think the market conditions have improved,” DeSantis said. “Our view is that especially in southeast Florida, that given that you really haven’t had many storms here … it’s justifiable to say that those rates should go down.”
Insurance crisis addressed
Because of the perfect storm of conditions, Florida homeowners, on average, have been paying the country’s highest property insurance premiums. Among the factors driving those costs are the state’s vulnerability to catastrophic storms, a high rate of property insurance lawsuits over insurance settlements to repair damage and jittery catastrophic fund markets that back insurance companies’ risk.
DeSantis says that’s changing, however.
Unlike the period between 2019 and 2023, when a slew of insurance companies either decided to roll up their Florida operations or went insolvent, he touted how 11 new companies have started underwriting property in Florida, mostly to take policyholders out of the Citizens. DeSantis also cited an S&P Global report issued last week that showed Florida’s average increase was 1% in the last year, although that data was limited to analyzing rates from each state’s largest 10 insurers.
“The upshot of all this is that this is not something that just happened,” DeSantis said, noting that major car insurance companies are also lowering their rates for Florida drivers. “The Legislature in Florida has done more to address these issues over the last many years than at any time in the history of the state of Florida.”
DeSantis’s estimation, however, is not what an association representing public insurance adjusters are seeing, according to Juan Moya, president of the Florida Association of Public Insurance Adjusters, which helps policyholders dissatisfied with their insurance carrier’s proposal for payment when home damage occurs.
While Floridians are paying more in premiums, what their insurance covers when it comes to water damage and roof replacement, has decreased, Moya said. Without legislative changes, the trend is going to continue as policyholders’ legal options for challenging insurer decisions have diminished.
“More insurers are returning to Florida, but that hasn’t yet translated into better outcomes for policyholders.,” Moya said. “FAPIA public adjusters continue to help countless Floridians struggling with delayed or denied claims from the 2024 hurricane season — some facing financial ruin, homelessness, or mold-related illnesses.”
Industry approves, but consumers not so much
DeSantis’ contentions also run counter to testimony heard at committee hearings on Jan. 16. During the meetings, lawmakers in both chambers heard about policyholders frustrated that they had been left with few options to challenge insurance companies’ grossly inadequate estimations of the cost to fix storm damage while insurance premiums are not decreasing as lawmakers were promised when the legislation was passed.
Still, DeSantis’s victory lap was echoed in a statement from Logan McFaddin, vice president for state government relations at American Property Casualty Insurance Association, which bills itself as the voice of the insurance industry.
“It’s clear the Governor and the Legislature effectively addressed the root of the state’s insurance crisis, and as we allow their reforms to continue to work, consumers should continue to see the benefit as market conditions further improve,” McFaddin said, according to a statement released shortly after DeSantis’s press conference.
A first test of changes, not yet complete
In addition, a big stress test on Florida’s insurance market remains to be completely tallied up. The hurricane season that ended Dec. 1, which spawned hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton, is the first since the reforms in which hundreds of thousands of storm damage claims were filed.
Industry experts say that the full ramification of those storms likely won’t be fully understood until the catastrophic bond market weighs how well Florida’s market has digested the results of those storms. The damage of the California wildfires might also play a role in the rates that insurance companies must pay to shoulder the risk of insuring property across the board in America.
DeSantis, however, made it clear that he has no intention of undoing any of the recent changes to lawsuit rules at this upcoming legislative session that starts in March. He threw cold water on one proposal, in particular.
State Rep. Hillary Cassel, R-Dania Beach, who recently switched from the Democratic Party, has introduced a bill that would make Citizens policies available to every homeowner, not just those who can’t get property insurance anywhere else. She contends it would spread the risk of Florida’s unique geography more evenly throughout the state, but DeSantis said that’s too much risk for the public, he said.
“What’s not on the table is unwinding any of the things that have allowed us to get to this point where we can actually announce that Citizens is doing a decrease, where we can actually announce that the big companies for auto are decreasing rates, where we can actually announce that S&P Global said that of all 50 states, Florida’s increases in homeowners’ insurance for 2024 was the lowest of all 50 states,” he said.
Budget shows fresh infusion of home improvement funding
DeSantis also pledged to continue his efforts to increase state funding for a program that boosts homes’ resistance to catastrophic winds. Through My Safe Florida Home, the state will match money that homeowners put toward storm-proofing their homes. For every $1 a qualified homeowner spends on hurricane-impact windows or a new roof, for example, the state will give them $2, up to $10,000. It means a $15,000 roof would cost a homeowner $5,000.
There’s currently a waitlist of people approved for those home-hardening grants . And DeSantis said he wants to clear that list sooner rather than later.
“We’ve dedicated really significant resources to be able to provide that lifeline to Floridians all across the state,” he said.
DeSantis’s budget released Feb. 3 shows more than $600 million for the My Safe Florida Home that, for the second year, would also allocate some money for improving condominiums. The governor’s budget shows $480 million allocated for grants to be distributed to 45,000 homeowners already qualified for the money after getting a state-funded inspection.
Since the program’s revival in 2022, the state has given out $576 million in grants, so this year’s commitment is proportionately larger. The governor’s budget also has $109 million for new inspections and grants.
State Rep. Chip LaMarca, R-Lighthouse Point, said he’ll propose that the state begin a trust to fund My Safe Florida Home, his third time sponsoring legislation involving the program. It’s proven its effectiveness, he said, reducing recipients’ premiums by an average of $1,100.
“The program creates an opportunity for the average homeowner to harden their home against storms and make their most important investment more resilient,” he said.
Anne Geggis is the insurance reporter at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at ageggis@gannett.com.Help support our journalism. Subscribe today
Alice J. Roden started working for Trending Insurance News at the end of 2021. Alice grew up in Salt Lake City, UT. A writer with a vast insurance industry background Alice has help with several of the biggest insurance companies. Before joining Trending Insurance News, Alice briefly worked as a freelance journalist for several radio stations. She covers home, renters and other property insurance stories.