High prices charged by Florida insurers revealed by cost-per-$1,000 analysis

Behold, the insurance secrets that surface when you look at publicly available data a different way, by ranking companies by what they charge per $1,000 of insured value:

— Collectively, Florida-based property insurers charge significantly higher rates per $1,000 than companies headquartered outside the state charge.

— Owners of condominium units in Florida pay twice as much per $1,000 to insure their contents than homeowners pay to cover their entire structures and contents.

— And if you are covered by one of the 17 companies that have helped to depopulate state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp., you are paying significantly more per $1,000 of insured value than customers of non-participating insurers.

These findings stem from an analysis by the South Florida Sun Sentinel of data that insurers have been required to make available to the public since the second quarter of 2022.

The newspaper dug into quarterly Residential Market Share Reports released by the Office of Insurance Regulation and calculated what insurance customers pay per $1,000 of coverage value, figures that are not included on the spreadsheets.

Comparing by cost per $1,000 adds a different perspective when the numbers are viewed side by side for the more than 85 insurance companies overseen by Florida’s insurance regulators.

Because it creates a level playing field by showing the cost for a fixed unit of coverage, consumers can use the comparison to help make informed decisions, and perhaps save some money, when selecting an insurance policy.

Comparing costs per $1,000 goes beyond just looking at average premiums because — in addition to dividing total premiums by the number of policies — there’s a third factor in the calculation.

It’s the dollar value of risks that insurers cover, expressed on the spreadsheet as “exposure.”

Risks include the cost to rebuild structures (or in the case of condominium units, the cost to replace damaged furnishings), but they also include less tangible factors such as the potential for dog-bite injuries, fallen trees, broken sidewalks and hurricane damage.

Then there’s geography, a major price driver as South Florida homeowners have known for decades.

A $500,000 home in South Florida “carries much more risk of loss and would be priced much higher than $500,000 of total insured value up in Tallahassee, 20 miles inland,” said Stacey Giulianti, chief legal officer at Boca Raton-based Florida Peninsula.

To find the cost per $1,000 for each company, the Sun Sentinel divided the total exposures and total paid premiums submitted by the insurers by their total number of policies. Then we divided the average premium cost by the average exposure value and multiplied the result by 1,000.

To obtain costs per $1,000 for large categories, we added the exposure, premium and policy totals for all companies within a category before calculating the averages.

The resulting cost per $1,000 can be compared over time, between coverage categories, or even between insurance companies.

“I think transparency is always beneficial,” said Kerrie Ruland, senior vice president of the managing agent for Monarch National Insurance Company, when asked the benefits of knowing costs per $1,000. “Consumer choice paired with education is paramount. Seeing rate per $1,000 is a great start — but I think it’s important to highlight how rate is directly impacted by risk characteristics so they can draw a complete picture.”

What the costs per $1,000 don’t reveal is why different insurers charge different premiums for properties with similar values.

Theoretically, costs per $1,000 would be roughly equal if all homes cost the same and if all risks of damage were the same in all neighborhoods throughout the state.

That’s not the case here.

In general, experts say high costs per $1,000 indicate that insurers are covering the most risky properties in parts of the state with high claims costs and frequency, like South Florida and, increasingly, Southwest Florida.

Low costs per $1,000 suggest insurers that limit coverage to the state’s least risky and most expensive properties, experts say.

Florida-based insurers charge more

During the first quarter of 2025, average costs per $1,000 charged to insure single-family houses in Florida ranged from an average high of $14.63 paid by 148 policyholders with Clear Blue Insurance Company, headquartered in Chicago, to an average low of $1.23 charged to 113 policyholders with Affiliated FM, a global company that specializes in commercial coverage, based on its website.

The average cost to cover each $1,000 of insured value was $5.29 for all-perils owner-occupied single-family home coverage — up from $4.59 during the second quarter of 2022.

Costs per $1,000 increased for 56 insurers in this category, while declining for 23 companies.

The average cost to cover condo units was $10.27, up from $8.81 nearly three years earlier. Costs per $1,000 increased for 51 condo insurers and fell for 15.

The calculation of those figures include the $7.60 per $1,000 charged by Florida’s insurer of last resort, state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp. for all-perils coverage of 374,383 owner-occupied single-family homes and $22.62 per $1,000 to cover 50,646 residential condo units.

Removing Citizens’ numbers enables a comparison of private market companies only and reduces the average coverage cost for single-family homes to $4.96 per $1,000 and $9.95 per $1,000 for condos.

Further insights emerge after identifying what insurers share in common and what sets them apart.

For the analysis, the Sun Sentinel separated the companies into several groups, including whether companies are Florida-based insurers or based out-of-state whether they participated in Citizens’ depopulation program, and whether they are also licensed to sell auto insurance.

Florida-based companies include relatively new insurers such as Universal Property & Casualty, based in Fort Lauderdale, Heritage Property & Casualty, Homeowners Choice, Loggerhead, Manatee, Ovation, Security First, Slide, Southern Oak, Tailrow, Trident and Tower Hill.

Companies not based in Florida include large national insurers such as USAA Casualty, Southern Owners, State Farm Florida, Orange, Olympus, Nationwide Property & Casualty, and Hartford Fire. The analysis counted companies as not based in Florida if they are owned by companies headquartered out of state, or by national holding companies such as Chubb, Liberty Mutual, Allstate, Progressive, and Travelers.

Even though only 31 of the 87 companies are Florida-based, they insured more than twice as many policies — 2,566,047 to 1,180,441.

Florida-based companies were significantly more costly, averaging $6.01 per $1,000 compared to out-of-state-based companies, which charged an average $3.59 per $1,000.

Sixteen of the 17 companies that participated in Citizens’ depopulation program were Florida based. The exception, Orange Insurance Exchange, is headquartered in Gainesville but its majority investor is Griffin Highline Capital, based in Dallas.

The depopulation program urges private insurers to “take out” policyholders from state-owned Citizens by offering a competing renewal rate that, as long as it’s less than 20% over Citizens’ estimated renewal rate, renders policyholders ineligible to return to Citizens.

Some companies have rapidly grown their policy counts by offering premiums just under the 20% increase, the Sun Sentinel found last year.

The average cost for coverage from Citizens depopulation participants was $6.50 per $1,000 — $1.22 more than the average for Florida-based companies. It was also 73 cents more than the depopulation participants charged during the second quarter of 2022, before the current round of Citizens takeouts got underway.

Insurers licensed to also sell private auto insurance, most likely to be national carriers and not Florida-based companies, were able to offer much lower prices, averaging $3.55 per $1,000, compared to the average $5.77 per $1,000 charged by insurers that are not able to sell auto insurance.

Few insurance executives agreed to discuss findings

Property insurers contacted for this report declined to publicly discuss why their costs per $1,000 differ from those of their competitors.

After the newspaper conducted its analysis, 49 companies were asked to identify the reasons they ended up at or near the top or bottom of several compiled lists.

Among executives who responded, only a few directly addressed results for their own companies.

But some instead offered general reasons why prices can differ so widely.

Florida-based companies dominated lists of highest costs to insure both houses and condo units.

They accounted for 13 of the 15 companies with the highest average costs for homeowner policies, including Homeowners Choice ($11.09), its affiliate, TypTap ($10.32), newcomer Trident ($9.69), Universal Property & Casualty ($8.37), and Florida Peninsula ($8.25).

All 15 companies charged well over the $4.96 per $1,000 overall average, and even the $6.01 average charged by Florida-based companies.

The highest-cost homeowner insurer, Hartford Insurance Company of the Midwest, charged $11.16 per $1,000, the analysis found. The company declined to comment but the data shows that four Hartford-branded insurers have been reducing their policy counts and winding down their Florida operations.

The 10 most expensive condo unit insurers with more than 500 policies also was headed by Hartford Insurance Company of the Midwest, charging an average $27.55 per $1,000.

But seven of the 10 most expensive condo unit insurers were Florida-based companies, ranging from Monarch National at $25.44 to Safepoint, at $16.19.

The average amount of risk insured by Florida-based companies was significantly lower, averaging $625,094, compared to an average risk of $1.05 million insured by companies headquartered outside the state. Yet the average premium was nearly identical at $3,759 for Florida-based insurers and $3,755 for all the others.

That supports opinions often voiced by insurance experts that many large national companies are primarily interested in insuring pricey new homes constructed under the most recent building codes.

Florida-based companies are left to cover the rest, said Travis Miller, spokesman for University Property & Casualty.

Miller said the higher costs per $1,000 among Florida-based insurers result from covering more homes in costlier regions like South Florida, the Orlando metro region and the coasts. “Insurers that have been writing and continue to write policies in Florida have rates reflecting the broad Florida market experience in recent years,” he said. “An insurer writing throughout the state with meaningful volume in these types of areas will have a higher overall blended cost-per-$1,000 than insurers avoiding or restricting these areas.”

Why insurers say ‘cost per $1,000’ doesn’t tell full story

Several insurance executives told the Sun Sentinel that it can be misleading to use costs per $1,000 to compare insurers.

The calculation does not compare apples to apples, some said, because it fails to consider market factors unique to insurers, including percentages of homes they insure near the hurricane-vulnerable coast, characteristics of homes they prefer to cover, how much water damage they cover, and credit ratings of homeowners.

“So if the home is old and not well maintained, it will have higher rates than a newer build or one that has kept up the roof, plumbing and windows, as an example,” said Scott Carmilani, CEO of Vault Reciprocal Exchange, one of the lowest-priced insurers.

In addition, policyholders can influence what they pay by selecting their deductibles, replacing their roofs, hardening their homes against hurricane threats, guarding against changing permitting requirements, and adding coverage for sheds and screen porches.

They also point out that except for Citizens, Florida-based insurers all rely heavily on reinsurance to finance their risks each year. Reinsurance costs eat up 30% to 50% of every premium dollar, industry spokespersons told the Florida Legislature earlier this year.

“Everyone has different costs, reinsurance, loss ratios, etc.,” Bruce Lucas, CEO of Slide Insurance, told the Sun Sentinel. “For example, Slide purchased more reinsurance than any other company so our costs are higher.”

Each insurer negotiates reinsurance buys separately and what each insurer pays only shows up on the premium side, and not the exposure side, of cost-per-$1,000 calculations.

Differences in costs per $1,000 also depend on the value of covered homes, said Locke Burt, founder and CEO of Security First Insurance. Large national companies prefer to cover higher-priced homes in parts of the state less at risk from hurricanes. It’s why they tend to have much lower costs per $1,000 than companies covering older, lower-priced homes, he said.

“The lower the average exposure, you will see the higher the cost per $1,000,” he said.

This is because homes typically experience more “small losses” than “large losses,” said Michael Richmond-Crum, senior director of personal lines at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association. As a result, “the incremental cost of coverage often decreases accordingly as the (exposure) increases,” he said.

Citizens spokesman Michael Peltier said one reason Citizens’ cost per $1,000 is higher than most companies is that “most Citizens risks are older, relatively lower valued, and on the coast in Southeast Florida.” He added, “As such, it’s not surprising that the cost per unit of insurance is relatively high for Citizens.”

But there’s no easy way to pinpoint which insurers are most heavily invested in the state’s riskiest regions.

Data that can identify the number of policies held by each insurer in the riskiest counties in the state — long recognized as Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe, and more recently Southwest Florida counties such as Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee and Collier — are protected from public release as “trade secrets.”

Litigation expenses are another factor seen only in the premium side of the cost per $1,000 equation. For nearly a decade prior to the Legislature’s passage of tort reforms in 2022, insurance executives warned about increases of lawsuits filed primarily on behalf of policyholders in the tricounty region.

The reforms, which stripped most rights of attorneys and plaintiffs to collect legal fees from insurers for prevailing by any amount in litigation, reduced lawsuit activity by half, according to Locke Burt, founder and president of Security First Insurance.

Yet, “companies (overall) are still getting sued 900 to 1,000 times a week,” he said.

While costs per $1,000 to insure condominium units are high, the average value of coverage — $161,108 — is typically far lower than values of single-family homes. One reason is that condo owners must pay for insurance twice: coverage for their own units, which they pay for directly, and coverage for their buildings and all other common areas, paid with their maintenance fees.

“However, the average non-catastrophe loss-per-condo claim, relative to the coverage amount, is higher than what’s experienced for houses,” Peltier said.

Added Richmond-Crum, “An older condo may have greater maintenance needs, which if not addressed adequately or in a timely manner, may contribute to a greater likelihood of a claim being filed,” he said.

As much as looking at costs per $1,000 can reveal, specific reasons why companies are priced as they are will remain elusive unless state regulators order insurers to open their books for all to see.

Birny Birnbaum, director of the Center for Economic Justice, an advocacy group for low-income consumers, questioned whether reinsurance costs and litigation are the cost drivers that insurers say they are.

A critic of industry claims that convinced lawmakers to enact the 2022 reforms, Birnbaum referred to recent reports that insurers funneled billions of premium dollars to their investors and into affiliate companies and wondered whether those payments played a role in the cost-per-$1,000 increases since 2022.

“My guess is that the main reason for increases in costs per $1,000 is the business model used by all the new entrants to Florida” that’s built around “minimal capital, massive reliance on reinsurance and siphoning off premium to affiliated businesses for all parts of the insurance life cycle,” he said. “This business model is massively inefficient for consumers and massively profitable for the insurer’s holding company.”

Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071 or by email at [email protected].

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