Property insurance reforms are working; Stay the course, Florida Legislature | Opinion

Mark Wilson, Miami HeraldMiami Herald

Floridians aren’t interested in political games — they want real solutions that improve their lives and ensure economic security. One of the biggest threats to that security is skyrocketing homeowners’ insurance rates, largely driven by a manufactured litigation crisis.

Thankfully, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature passed historic lawsuit abuse reforms in December 2022 and March 2023, which began to curb outrageous litigation bonanzas to improve and stabilize the Florida insurance market.

And just two years after these significant legislative reforms, the market is seeing 11 new insurance companies come to Florida and rates for families and businesses are stabilizing or starting to drop with the return of competition.

This much-needed relief has just begun. Staying the course with this successful formula will provide certainty for insurance companies looking to invest in Florida, provide consumers with more competition and could lead to further premium reductions that will make the price of insurance more affordable for Florida families.

While all the factors that go into insurance rates can be complicated, inflation included, the recent good news is easy to understand.

Much of this recent success is due to eliminating incentives for billboard trial lawyers to file meritless lawsuits to earn attorney fees, putting profits over people and increasing rates for everyone else.

For years, there was a major incentive for these meritless lawsuits known as “one-way attorney fees.”

Simply put, these fees made lawsuits against your insurance carrier risk-free and created a landscape where Florida accounted for only about 7% of homeowners’ claims nationally but had nearly 80% of all homeowners’ insurance lawsuits in the country.

Clearly, these one-way attorney fees incentivized baseless lawsuits, even over very small amounts. Billboard trial lawyers stood to win attorney fees and not be responsible for paying defense fees if they won a case by just $1. The real losers were Florida homeowners, who faced higher insurance rates due to these actions. Recognizing this scam, the Florida Legislature and the governor took decisive action to end it.

This uneven playing field that led to mountains of litigation put insurance companies out of business and led to companies leaving Florida and also forced insurance rates to go higher.

Eliminating these fees has been a big win for consumers and has led to less litigation by all metrics and more private insurers writing policies in Florida, reflecting confidence that these reforms are having the intended result — more competition and a stabilized market to the benefit of Floridians.

The impact has been significant and continues to grow. Consider this:

The success of these changes has already been substantial, and they have just started. Not only will Florida families benefit, but Florida will also solidify its standing as the best place in the nation to live, work and own a business.

The facts are clear — the insurance reforms are benefiting all Floridians by stabilizing the market.

Florida is on the right path, and we should stay the course and continue on this successful path to let the 2022 and 2023 reforms work.

Mark Wilson is president and CEO of the Florida Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Consumer Protection Coalition, which is focused on protecting consumers from the costs of lawsuit abuse.