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State legislators continue shielding insurance companies from public scrutiny
A consumer in Southwest Florida has no way of knowing if their property insurance company has violated state policies regarding insurers’ financial health. That’s because Florida law prohibits making public the names of companies that violate those policies.
To monitor the financial health of the roughly 50 to 60 private residential property/casualty insurance companies operating in our state, Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) assesses an important metric: the ratio of actual or projected written premiums. This measures the value of what the company is collecting in premiums compared to the financial backing the company has to pay claims on the policies for which it is collecting those premiums. For example, if an insurer writes $30 million in premiums and has $10 million in surplus, the ratio is 3.0. This means the company is writing three times as much risk as it has in financial backing.
An excessive ratio suggests aggressive or risky growth without adequate financial backing.The Insurer Stability Unit within OIR is charged with monitoring insurance companies using this metric, and it is required by law to publish a Property Insurer Stability Unit report twice a year. That report provides the number of companies that have been flagged for violating the permitted ratio.
State law prohibits naming those companies.
According to the most recent report, from July 2025, ”Sixteen insurers were referred to the Insurer Stability Unit for enhanced monitoring during the reporting period... There were 23 referrals … for violating the ratio of actual or projected written premiums... Some insurers were referred multiple times.”
Yet, a consumer has no way of knowing whether or not the company to which they are paying their premiums is engaged in aggressive or risky growth without adequate financial backing.
Remember United Property & Casualty Insurance (UPC)? In 2023, UPC was declared insolvent by the OIR because it did not have adequate funds to meet its obligations to its policyholders following Hurricane Ian. Had UPC been flagged for violating the state’s requirements for a sufficient surplus? We have no way of knowing.
The reason the state gives for not making this information available to the public is that they don’t want consumers to “panic” and leave a company which might still be able to rectify its situation. Why, then, does my local newspaper print information about all of the public health inspection findings about local restaurants? The local health department doesn’t’ take the attitude of “Well, let’s don’t report those rats in the kitchen because the public will panic and stop frequenting this restaurant, and they might still rectify their situation.” No, the public gets to know about the rats the very week the health department finds them.
Maybe that difference in approach has something to do with money. The Florida Insurance Council and other insurance-industry PACs pour millions of dollars into state elections, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation writes rules and policies that favor that industry.
If you feel the law should be changed so that consumers have access to complete information about the companies to which they are paying their premiums, let your state legislators know. You can find name and contact information for your state officials at Cicero’s Elected Officials & Districts https://live.cicerodata.com/
Written by Cynthia Wolfe 8/6/2025