Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer of last resort, is no longer Florida’s largest property insurer, marking a key milestone in the state’s efforts to stabilise its property insurance market.
Citizens’ management revealed late last week that October takeouts and policy assumptions by other insurers had reduced its policy count to around 560,000, a level not seen since spring 2021, just before a surge in litigation and multiple carrier insolvencies significantly increased Citizens’ exposure.
The decline means Fort Lauderdale-based Universal Property & Casualty Insurance and State Farm Florida Insurance now lead the state’s property insurance market. Universal reported approximately 561,546 policies in Florida at the end of September, while State Farm held 646,429 policies at the end of August, according to Florida regulators’ latest data.
Citizens’ current policy count is 40% lower than its peak of 1.3 million policies in September 2023, just months before Florida lawmakers introduced reforms limiting one-way attorney fees and reducing incentives for claims litigation. The shrinking size of Citizens signals that more policyholders are moving to private insurers as premiums decline, reflecting the combined impact of legislative reforms and Citizens’ depopulation programme. Officials from Citizens and other insurers say the once-distressed Florida property market is now stabilising.
A Citizens spokesperson described the latest figures as “significant,” noting that 199,000 policies were assumed by other carriers in October.
Takeout activity has accelerated in recent months. In the first half of the year, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) approved takeout offers on around 1.2 million Citizens policies. However, only about 200,000 of these were accepted and removed from Citizens’ books, the OIR reported.
This autumn, nine carriers were approved for 368,947 takeouts, and more than half were accepted in October, according to Citizens’ data. The largest share of October takeouts went to Slide Insurance and Manatee Insurance Exchange.
The announcement follows news from Security First Insurance, which implemented a statewide average rate cut for homeowners – one of the largest reductions in the last three years – further signalling a warming market. Auto insurers have also attributed improved market stability to legislative reforms. Last week, State Farm confirmed it would reduce average personal auto premiums in Florida by around 10%, the latest in a series of rate decreases this year.