RNC chairman pushes change to Florida insurance law backed by GOP megadonor

A billionaire Republican megadonor is behind a bill moving through the Florida Legislature that the state’s insurance commissioner warned could force cash-strapped condo owners into riskier and more expensive policies.

SB 1028 would require Citizens Property Insurance to create a new platform to allow a largely unregulated class of insurance companies to take policies out of the state-run company.

One company in particular wants to create that new platform: Ryan Specialty, a Chicago-based firm whose co-founder, Patrick Ryan, and his wife, Shirley Ryan, donated more than $30 million to GOP congressional committees, candidates and conservative causes in 2024, according to data from OpenSecrets.

The company has approached regulators and Citizens with the idea and is lobbying behind the scenes. The bill is being sponsored by Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, who is also the Republican National Committee chairperson.

Florida’s insurance commissioner has expressed deep concerns with the legislation.

Insurers have long been able to take policies out of Citizens, the insurer of last resort for homeowners and businesses, if the offers are within 20% of the cost of Citizens’ premiums.

In the last few years, nearly 1 million homeowners have been forced off Citizens into private insurer policies.

But only insurance companies whose rates and practices are approved by the Office of Insurance Regulation can participate. That gives policyholders some protections under state law, like being given clear language about rate increases.

Under the bill, a different class of companies, known as surplus lines insurers, would be allowed to take out certain policies using the type of clearinghouse proposed by Ryan Specialty.

Unlike other insurance companies that write policies based on basic criteria, surplus lines insurers write custom policies, insuring everything from large condominiums to guitarist Keith Richards’ middle finger.

Those companies’ rates and practices aren’t approved by regulators.

Under the bill, they would only be able to take out commercial policies, such as ones covering condominiums and businesses.

Commissioner Mike Yaworsky warned senators Wednesday that surplus lines policies are so complex that they’re intended only for the wealthy and sophisticated — people who don’t need the state’s protections.

Some of the condo owners who could be forced into those polices are not prepared to work with such policies, Yaworsky said.

Many of Citizens’ eligible 2,636 commercial residential policies are not ritzy high-end properties: 68% were built before 1984, according to Citizens.

Yaworsky said he didn’t want to test a “pilot project” on those people.

“We don’t want to find ourselves in places where, in South Florida, for example, we have 65-year-old people that are already facing a lot of inflationary pressure turned away from the stability that Citizens has offered,” Yaworsky told the Herald/Times after Wednesday’s meeting.

Yaworsky said the bill offered “no regulatory oversight whatsoever” of the company Citizens hires to manage the program. He told the Herald/Times that Ryan Specialty approached his office a year ago and that some of its ideas “made us uncomfortable.”

The Ryans’ political donations in 2024 did not include the RNC, and Gruters said he advocated for the idea before he was chosen by President Donald Trump in October to be the political committee’s chairperson.

He said multiple companies have pitched Citizens on creating such a system, and he doesn’t care which one gets the contract if the bill passes.

“The key is to get these rates down,” Gruters said.

Representatives of the company and their lobbyists have not responded to requests for comment.

The legislation has also received a chilly reception among Florida insurers.

The Florida Surplus Lines Association, a trade group representing the types of companies that would use the program created by the bill, would not say whether it supports the idea.

“Our diverse members are focused on providing competitive, market-based insurance solutions‚” the association’s legislative committee chair, Dave DeMott, said in a statement.

Citizens has no position on the bill, according to spokesperson Michael Peltier. He said in a statement that representatives from Ryan Specialty approached it with “the concept of a commercial clearinghouse.”

Since the legislation came out, three other companies, which he wouldn’t name, have also inquired about it, Peltier said.

Ryan Specialty was founded in 2010 by Patrick Ryan, who previously founded and led the insurance brokerage company Aon Corp. for 41 years. Patrick and Shirley Ryans’ giving in the 2024 election cycle put them among the top 20 individual donors to federal committees, according to OpenSecrets.

In November, Ryan Specialty gave $750,000 to two political committees, according to campaign finance records. The next month, those committees spread the money across a number of other organizations, including $500,000 to the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, an account overseen by next year’s Senate president, Sen. Jim Boyd.

Boyd, a Bradenton Republican, proposed similar ideas to SB 1028 in 2024, which didn’t pass. He spoke in support of Gruters’ bill in committee last month, expressing the need to remove more policies from Citizens.

He said afterward that he’d heard Ryan Specialty was interested, but emphasized that the bill isn’t geared toward any specific vendor.

“I’ve heard that name as being mentioned,” Boyd said. “I haven’t heard names, but I’ve heard some others are interested in it.”

In the House, an identical bill, HB 943, is being sponsored by Rep. Mike Redondo, a Miami Republican who is slated to become House speaker in 2030. He said that although the number of eligible policies is small, it makes up about 20% of Citizens’ liability exposure.

Redondo said he’s never heard from Ryan Specialty and that Citizens would have to bid out the services.

“There’s no requirement within the bill that I think would limit it to any one company,” Redondo said. “That’s certainly not the intention.”

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