Enrollment in Florida’s insurer of last resort has fallen to levels not seen in years, even as the population and housing have expanded, according to Florida Association of Insurance Agents president and CEO Kyle Ulrich (pictured above).
Citizens Property Insurance Corp.’s policy count dropped from 1,407,805 in September 2023 to 427,097 in November, a shift Ulrich and other industry sources link mainly to the 2022 legal and market reforms.
National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) Southeast regional vice president Joshua Stephens said other states with growing FAIR plans and residual markets should pay attention to Florida’s experience.
He argued that “the best way to address the costs of insurance is by addressing the cost of risk,” through litigation changes, regulatory adjustments and mitigation.
Stephens said lawmakers concentrated on “the risks driving costs rather than just trying to suppress prices,” noting that “just a few years ago, Florida was the picture of litigation abuse run amok, with nearly 80% of insurance related litigation in the U.S. occurring in the Sunshine state.”
State officials have tied the Citizens depopulation to a measurable shift in claims and legal activity since those reforms took effect. Gov. Ron DeSantis has said homeowners’ insurance lawsuits are down about 30% and Citizens’ lawsuit count has fallen nearly 50%, arguing that the changes were designed to address a period when Florida produced only about 8% of U.S. property claims but 78% of the related litigation.
Ulrich said the speed of Citizens’ enrollment decline is especially notable when viewed alongside new capacity entering the market and regulatory approval of additional property carriers since the reforms. He said the lower policy count indicates that more risks are being absorbed by the voluntary market rather than defaulting to the state-backed insurer.
Citizens’ book had previously stayed under 500,000 policies from early 2016 until September 2020, before swelling again amid nonrenewals, tighter underwriting and a series of private insurer failures.
Policies in force passed one million in August 2022 and remained above that threshold until late 2024, with carriers citing abusive litigation, one-way attorney fee rules and assignment of benefits activity as major pressures.
Those shifts have carried through to the reinsurance market, where Florida’s risk profile is being reassessed. An analysis by Gallagher Re found homeowners lawsuits down by more than 30% after the 2022–23 measures, Florida domestic carriers collectively returning to underwriting profit in 2024 for the first time since 2015.
Average risk‑adjusted reinsurance pricing at the June 1, 2025 renewal declined by 10.7%, while Citizens’ policy count dropped by about one-third year over year to 777,592 by June 2025.
The last time Citizens’ enrollment was as low as in November was in 2019, when Florida’s population stood at 21.47 million, roughly 1.9 million fewer residents than last year. Greenberg Traurig shareholder Fred Karlinsky said “the Citizens enrollment number should be incrementally higher” given population growth, yet “it’s still low.”
Karlinsky said “Florida understands hurricanes,” but that the main problems of the past decade stemmed from “the litigation environment” and “out-of-control litigation, fabricated claims.”
Ulrich added that the reforms have led to a “monumental shift in availability,” with more carriers willing to take policies out of Citizens, though many companies still want to see additional seasons of loss experience before expanding further.
