Speaking recently at the 2025 Florida Chamber Insurance Summit, the state’s Insurance Commissioner, Mike Yaworsky, emphasised the importance of tort reforms and the positive impact on Florida’s insurance market, but warned against turning back the clock.
The key property and casualty P&C) insurance reforms targeted numerous areas such as assignment-of-benefit abuses, one-way attorney fees, and inflated claims litigation.
According to reports, numerous P&C re/insurers have entered the market since the reforms, while litigation related to property claims has reportedly dropped to pre-2019 levels.
In his keynote speech on day two of the Summit, Florida Insurance Commissioner, Yaworsky, noted that it’s been quite a time for the state’s insurance market.
“If in 2016 you saw a report from the Office of Insurance Regulation that said litigation abuse was beginning to cause systemic issues in our marketplace, you were right. If in 2018 you saw us issue further reports and give testimony and give your own testimony before the legislature, and in the forum of the public square, about how this marketplace was on the verge of collapse due to abuse of litigation patterns that have been detected, water loss, AOB, other issues that we saw in the litigation space, you were right,” said Yaworsky.
He continued: “If in 2019 you saw a report from the Office of Insurance Regulation that showed that Florida accounted for 8% of all property claims in the United States and 76% of the litigation, you were right. If you saw in 2021 our market on the brink of collapse, our consumers losing coverage, companies fleeing our marketplace, and reinsurers simply unwilling to write, you were right.
“If in 2022 and 2023 you joined the Office, you joined the Governor, you joined speaker Renner, you joined Senate President Passidomo, and Senator Boyd, and you said that if we pass these reforms, relief will come, our marketplace will be stabilised, and we will go from being the laughing stock of insurance markets in the country to the one that everyone is now looking to, to find solutions to their own problems, you’re right.”
Yaworsky went on to state that now, as 2025 comes to a close, there’s proof that the reforms have worked and provided much needed relief and stability.
“We can show unequivocally that this marketplace has stabilised, that consumers are finding relief, that we have more options for people than we have in decades, that our companies are more capitalized to handle whatever comes, whenever the wind blows, than they have been in years. We were right. This market is better off for it. Our people are better off for it. Florida can continue to grow, can continue to be a place where families can call home because of those actions,” said Yaworsky.
As noted by Yaworsky, tort reforms like this often raise questions, and notably around consumers no longer having an option to litigate, and therefore being at the mercy of their insurer.
“I don’t know about any of you guys, but I’ve been to Miami, I’ve driven on the turnpike, I’ve watched cable TV. The litigation environment, there seems to be services still offered to litigate a claim,” said Yaworsky.
“And so, let’s not mince words about what any turn back on the reforms would do. It would be the equivalent of adding a multi-billion dollar tax on the back of Floridians to subsidise an industry that appears to be doing fine. We cannot turn back the clock on these reforms. We must step forward. And I ask everyone in this room who has stood with the governor, with the Office, with CFO Patronis and CFO Ingoglia, to go one more time and defend these good laws, not because they are to your own benefit, but because they are right for Florida.
“It is vital in the coming decades that we have a marketplace that is responsible and can handle and bear the risks that we face. And there are many risks. Two of them, most principally, the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico that love to throw storms towards this lovely sandbar we built a paradise on,” he added.
Yesterday, on the first day of the Summit, a panel discussed reinsurance rates ahead of the key January and mid-year, Florida-focused renewals.
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