TALLAHASSEE, Fla — State lawmakers are vowing to take a deep dive into Florida’s home insurance crisis. This comes after reports that insurance companies were moving billions of dollars to their own affiliate companies while claiming to lose money.
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Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez announced it in his opening remarks for the legislative session Tuesday. He said the reports show some insurance companies may have been using creative ways to hide their profits.
In 2022, first there was Hurricane Ian that ravaged southwest Florida. Hurricane Nicole followed about six weeks later. That year Florida saw half a dozen insurance companies go under and homeowners saw rates skyrocket. The property insurance market in the Sunshine State was in freefall. The state called two special sessions to try to fix the mess by limiting lawsuits and helping the insurance industry.
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Now lawmakers are raising questions about how badly the insurance companies were really doing.
House Speaker Daniel Perez said, “Property insurance matters to the people of Florida.”
He announced the Insurance and Banking Subcommittee will hold hearings to take a close look at the insurance companies claims. This comes after the Tampa Bay Times first reported findings in a 2022 document that never made it to state legislators back then that indicated insurers moved large amounts of money to affiliate companies and claimed to lose millions of dollars. The Office of Insurance Regulation paid for the study. It looked at what was going on from 2017 through 2019.
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Perez said the report may suggest some insurance companies were “using accounting tricks to hide substantial profits while telling us they were in crisis.”
The American Property Casualty Insurance Association responded by claiming insurance companies lost money from the storms and rampant legal system abuse. As part of a news release, it wrote that recent news reports about the issue are “very misleading and lack an understanding of the reporting, dividend, and capital requirements for insurers.”
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Speaker Perez is vowing the subcommittee will have the resources to get to the bottom of the issue including, “issuing subpoenas, putting witnesses under oath and hiring outside experts.”
The House Insurance and Banking Subcommittee held its first meeting of the session Wednesday and announced it will call special meetings for this investigation.
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