- While Florida insurance rates are not expected to rise as dramatically as in recent years, some areas are experiencing significant increases.
- Counties along Florida's Gulf Coast and Central Florida are seeing some of the highest premium increases, attributed to recent hurricane activity.
- In contrast, South Florida, particularly Miami-Dade County, is experiencing more moderate rate increases, potentially due to legal reforms and a decrease in lawsuits against insurers.
Next year’s insurance rates aren’t expected to increase anything like they did during the height of the state’s insurance crisis three years ago, but parts of the state are getting hit by cost increases.
With hurricanes slamming the state’s western flank over the past three consecutive hurricane seasons — including three catastrophic storms — the cost of insuring property on the Gulf Coast is getting pushed closer to that of South Florida.
The latest data shows that even though South Florida still has the highest average premiums, the largest increases in what homeowners are paying for multi-peril coverage are concentrated in areas of the state that historically were not considered the riskiest.
Southwest Florida premiums still lower, but rates increasing faster
Lee, Charlotte, Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota and Pasco counties have all seen their average premiums rise between 45% and 47% between the first quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2024. That’s the time between the state’s first report that shows county-by-county insurance data and the latest, just recently released.
Taken together, the reports show some inland Central Florida counties are also seeing higher increases, such as Lake County’s nearly 46% increase in premiums in that time. That interior county saw historic flooding after Hurricane Ian in 2022.
Miami-Dade County, meanwhile, saw its average premium increase less than half that — 21% — during the same period.
Insurance rates in the state are closely watched as Floridians pay more, on average, than any residents of any other state.
The regional contrast in rate increases is even more pronounced in this year’s annual increases of Citizens Property Insurance Corp. rates, the state-backed insurer of last resort, which also insures the most property in the Sunshine State.
Compared with last year, the average Citizens’ rate for Miami-Dade County is dropping 2.4% and the only counties getting average increases limited to single digits are Broward and Palm Beach counties, which together with Miami-Dade, account for 27% of Citizens’ policies.
The trend is not surprising for either side of the state, industry observers say.
Windstorm losses and more risk
“The rate changes being implemented this year by Citizens show average costs increasing in the areas most impacted by the last three years of hurricane windstorm losses in Florida — primarily along the Gulf Coast from Collier County northward to the western portion of the Panhandle,” said Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications for the industry-backed Insurance Information Institute. “Additionally, we are seeing average rate increases in counties along the Interstate 4 corridor, from the Tampa Bay region through Orlando.”
Increasing population and property values in those areas also play a role. But there’s no denying that while the southeast Atlantic coast hasn’t had a direct hit in decades, four of the past five hurricanes making a Florida landfall since 2022 have been along the Gulf Coast. And a few of them, barreled across the state’s midsection and then hit Central Florida.
Risk catching up to Atlantic side
It's making Southwest Florida property insurance market less attractive to insurers than it once was, said Ryan Papy, president of Keyes Insurance, an agency based in Miami. The western side of the state presented a market that could balance out their South Florida risks, Papy said.
While “they were doing business in Southeast Florida, where they can charge the most premium, they would really lower rates to be extremely competitive in areas that were less prone to claims, and, it seemed, hurricane activity,” Papy said. “That was Naples, Fort Myers, and all these places now shown to be … just as susceptible.”
The impact hasn’t fully hit, according to Professor Charles Nyce, chair of the Risk Management & Insurance Department at Florida State University.
Hurricane Ian, the third costliest storm in U.S. history to make landfall when it hit a Lee County barrier island in 2022, hasn’t been fully digested by the models used to estimate risk and thus insurance rates, said Nyce, whose department is the oldest of its kind among the state’s colleges and universities.
Any weather events that fall outside expected occurrences mean an update to the models used to estimate risk if the Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology agrees, he said.
“It would take a year or two for any new information to work its way into the model,” Nyce said.
He also attributed the moderating rate increases in South Florida to recent changes to tort law in the state that took out much of the incentive for suing insurers in the wake of a claim settlement dispute.
Less business for lawyers
Before the changes in tort law had an impact, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation’s market stability reports show that, despite no direct storm hits for decades, South Florida’s claims history has been out of proportion with the size of its market. Figures from 2022 show that although 23% of the state’s insurance policies cover property in the area, South Florida accounted for 49% of the litigated insurance claims during the 2022 calendar year.
Moving forward, though, the latest state regulators’ market stability report shows that the number of monthly legal filings against property insurers has dropped from the high of nearly 9,000 as 2021 wound down to about 3,300 as 2025 began.
Nyce said that the decreasing number of legal proceedings filed is good news for another key determinant of insurance rates: Reinsurance, which is the coverage that insurance companies buy to insure their risk against catastrophic level claims and the resulting lawsuits. It determines about 30% of the cost that Floridians pay for wind insurance. And early indications are that it’s going to keep dropping, despite the California wildfires, Nyce said.
“Reinsurance started coming down in the beginning of 2025,” Nyce said. “So if you put me on the stand right now and I had to guess, I would say they remain stable for the July renewals.
“But when I say stable, I mean, reinsurance rates are still historically high,” he continued. "They are going to be a bit lower than they were in 2023 and 2024, but historically speaking, 2023 and 2024 were some of the most expensive reinsurance years on record.”
Even if policyholders aren’t seeing lower numbers on the total insurance premium they pay, fewer legal proceedings against insurers and moderating reinsurance rates appear to be making the overall Florida market more attractive to insurance companies. More than half a dozen new companies have opened shop in Florida over the past 18 months and that’s taking pressure off the state’s insurer of last resort, Citizens’ officials say.
Citizens caseload decreasing
“Considering where we were, we've made tremendous headway, tremendous progress, towards getting down to where we need to be because of the reforms that were led by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature,” said Carlos Beruff, chair of the Citizens Board of Governors.
Nearly 40% of Citizens’ policyholders have dropped off the rolls since the number reached a peak in September 2023. In an emergency session in December 2022, the Legislature passed a law that stopped attorneys' fees from being added to the court settlement of a disputed claim, hence making it more difficult for policyholders to sue their insurer.
Although the insured have narrowed options for holding their insurer accountable in disputes about the value of a claim, it's attracting new insurers to the Florida market. And that reduces the risks Citizens is carrying.
“This is how we reduce the risk Floridians are exposed to,” Beruff said.
Citizens can levy a surcharge on every insurance policy in the state if the catastrophic claims of Citizens’ policyholders deplete the nonprofit’s reserves too much, as happened after the 2004-2005 hurricane seasons when a series of storms hit the state.
Citizens was hoping to make their policies even less attractive to property owners looking for insurance by increasing rates more. With data showing that Citizens rates needed to increase rates by 92% to keep from competing with the private market, last year, Citizens asked state regulators to allow an average 14% increase of its rates; that request was slashed to an average increase of 8%.
Tim Cerio, Citizens’ president and chief executive officer, doesn’t think the cut will present any need for Citizens to tax all insurance policies to keep its finances sound. Still, it’s the largest gap between what the company requested and what regulators allowed since 2021.
“We hoped to have a bigger increase, but certainly we have policyholders who are going to be happy for some relief,” Cerio 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
