Debby’s Florida already claims nearly 12,000 as Yaworsky says the market is consolidating

The number of Florida claims from Hurricane Debby filed in the five days since the storm is already nearly half the number of claims filed in Hurricane Idalia over a three-month period.

Debby’s claims as of Friday totaled more than 11,900, the Florida Bureau of Insurance Regulation reported after compiling necessary data from property insurers. Idalia, which hit the same region of the state in 2022, produced 25,047 claims as of Nov. 16, 10 weeks after landfall.

Debby’s surprising number of early claims came despite Idalia being a stronger Category 3 storm with more wind damage expected in the Big Bend area of ​​the state. So far, however, the value of Debby’s claims is far less than Idalia’s – just over $89 million. That’s less than a third of the value of Idalia claims after 10 weeks.

OIR officials did not speculate on the reasons for the rapid increase in claims from Debby. Property owners may have learned from Idalia to file claims quickly or that some homes raked by Idalia received secondary damage in Debby. Debby may have caused more damage in more populated areas near Tampa.

The numbers came out late Friday as Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky posted a bulletin noting more encouraging signs that Florida’s property insurance market is recovering after legislative changes in 2022 and 2023.

Yaworsky noted that State Farm and Progressive Insurance Companies recently committed to continuing to write properties in Florida, and another new company, Trident Reciprocal Exchange, was approved. Trident is the ninth new company to be approved for Florida in the past year.

“Today’s announcements are another indication of the continued strengthening of Florida’s property insurance market,” said Yaworsky, who met with Progressive executives last week. “OIR will continue to work with Florida and national carriers like Progressive to recruit and retain business so all Floridians can benefit from a strong market.”

He also highlighted other positive signs:

Rate increases have slowed. Over the past six months, the average homeowners insurance rate increase request is 1.2 percent, a big difference from the past few years of requests that have been as high as 56 percent. A year ago, the average 30-day rate increase request from carriers was 7.6 percent, Yaworsky said.

Reinsurance: Early results from a recent data call with insurers show that reinsurance costs for Florida insurance companies fell an average of 1.7 percent from 2023 — the first decline in years.

Policies in force: In Q1 2024, 7.43 million home insurance policies were in force in Florida. About 83 percent of these are written by admitted property insurers, as opposed to surplus lines companies or the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Recent data from the Florida Surplus Lines Service Office shows, however, that for personal and commercial coverage, surplus lines’ market share has continued to grow over the past six years.

Depopulation of citizens: So far this year, OIR has approved 768,692 takeaways from citizens to private carriers, an 855% increase over the number of takeaways in 2022. To date, however, only 132,445 policies have been accepted or removed from Citizens, OIR said. Some homeowners said premiums offered by private insurers for bundled purchases were many times higher than Citizens, the South Florida Sun Sentinel recently reported.

At the end of June, Citizens reported 1.2 million policies in force.

Reducing citizen business is necessary to avoid potential surcharges on Floridians’ catastrophic loss policies, former Florida state Rep. Don Brown and former U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross wrote this week in a blog post on Johnson Strategies’. website.

A citizen surcharge, along with potential policy assessments from the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association could increase costs for homeowners.

“With all of these potential assessments looming over Florida policyholders, it is important that the state not only stabilizes our property insurance market to prevent more insurance company insolvencies, but also transitions as many policies from Citizens to the insurance market as possible private”, Brown. and Ross wrote. “Fewer policies in Citizens means less appraisal risk for policyholders who already pay for their own property insurance coverage.”

Photo: Kurt McAnly, of Riverview, Fla., walks outside his flooded property last week from Tropical Storm Debby. (Dylan Townsend/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

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