Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state’s once-beleaguered insurance market is stabilizing after a multiyear legal overhaul, pointing to rising competition, moderating homeowners’ rate requests, and declines in litigation as evidence that reforms are filtering through to consumers.
Speaking to insurers at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) Annual Meeting in Orlando, DeSantis framed the changes as part of a broader push to make Florida’s business climate more predictable.
He cited three consecutive years in which CNBC ranked Florida’s economy No. 1 among US states and linked that performance to what he called a more restrained judiciary and aggressive tort reform enacted in 2022 and 2023.
“When I took office in 2019, Florida was considered one of the worst ‘judicial hellholes,’” DeSantis said. “While many factors contributed to our economic rise, legal reform has been an important component in Florida rising among the rest of the states.”
DeSantis highlighted three Florida Supreme Court appointments he made on his first day in office, along with subsequent appellate appointments, as moves that “ended the type of activism” he contends had chilled investment and hindered reforms.
Florida, he noted, had just 8% of the nation’s property insurance claims but 78% of its litigation; this gap made coverage more expensive and drove carriers out of the state. The state's reforms, which targeted lawsuit incentives and other cost drivers, were designed to reduce litigation volume and lower frictional expense across property and auto lines.
Two years later, DeSantis pointed to signs of a shift, including greater competition as 17 new insurers have entered the Florida market, while existing carriers are allocating additional capital.
Homeowners’ insurance pricing, meanwhile, is trending downward, as regulators received 59 filings for rate decreases and 87 for zero increases, according to the governor.
“By 2024, Florida’s market had the lowest increases of all 50 states – something no one would have predicted a couple of years earlier,” DeSantis said. “In 2025, we’re seeing something similar.” Over the summer, he said, the 30-day average of requested homeowners’ rate changes was down 1.4% year-over-year.
Additionally, homeowners’ insurance lawsuits have decreased by about 30% after previously representing more than three-quarters of such cases nationwide. DeSantis said Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer of last resort, has seen its lawsuit count fall nearly 50% since the reforms.
Roughly 214,000 policies have moved from Citizens to private carriers year-to-date, which DeSantis said reduced taxpayer-backed exposure by $33 billion. He emphasized that Citizens can levy across-the-board assessments after major events, meaning a more robust private market reduces systemwide risk.
The top five auto groups posted an average 6.5% rate reduction in Florida in 2025, DeSantis said, contrasting that with double-digit national increases in 2024. He also cited a personal auto liability loss ratio of 53.3% at the end of 2024, calling it the lowest in the country.
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DeSantis acknowledged the reforms were difficult to pass and remain politically contested. He criticized an effort in the 2025 legislative session to roll back portions of the changes, saying such a reversal could drive premiums up by as much as 50%.
The proposals did not advance, which he attributed to a lack of public mandate and opposition in the Senate.
“If you say you reformed and stabilized the market to bring in more business and better costs, and then a year later you try to reverse it, how do you square that (with voters)?” DeSantis said. “I don’t think there’s any realistic chance of that coming back next year.”
While crediting legal changes for much of the momentum, DeSantis said the market also benefited from resilience investments and faster catastrophe recovery. He highlighted the My Safe Florida Home grant program, designed to harden homes and reduce premiums, and cited rapid post-storm infrastructure rebuilds, such as reopening the Sanibel Causeway two weeks after Hurricane Ian and restoring a Pine Island bridge in three days.
Still, DeSantis cautioned that storm risk, inflation, and reinsurance costs remain outside the state’s direct control. He argued Florida’s policy lever was to curb lawsuit inflation and create a competitive marketplace, which ultimately disciplines pricing and service.
As of early October, DeSantis said there was nothing on the immediate horizon likely to affect the continental US. But he acknowledged that conditions could shift quickly. His near-term priority is to hold the legislative line on the 2022-23 reforms, clear the remaining backlog in resilience grants, and press carriers to convert lower legal and loss costs into durable rate relief.
“We can’t control whether we get hit by hurricanes. We also can’t control national inflation,” DeSantis said.
“But we could address the anomaly that while Florida had 8% of property insurance claims nationwide, it accounted for 78% of the litigation. You cannot have that level of legal expense without it impacting what people pay for policies. Addressing that would stabilize the market, induce more businesses to offer coverage, and, by reducing excessive suits and costs, ultimately provide relief to homeowners.”
