Policyholder surplus increased significantly, direct premium written jumped, and combined ratio has fallen for Florida-focused property insurance carriers in 2023, according to a Gallagher Re report released this week.
The analysis echoes some of the good news in an S&P Global report posted last month, showing that Florida’s top 50 carriers in 2023 had turned a collective profit for the first time in seven years, thanks in part to improved investment income and no major hurricanes in the state.
Both reports were based on carrier data provided to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Universal Property & Casualty Insurance, one of the largest carriers in the state, had not yet filed its year-end financial data and was not included in the Gallagher information, perhaps skewing the overall picture.
For 57 other insurers, the Gallagher Florida Market Watch report noted that surplus grew by almost 16% in 2023 compared to the previous year, reaching $12 billion. The data was broken down into subcategories: For Florida subsidiaries of major national carriers, surplus increased by 2.4% to more than $1 billion. For Florida-based carriers, surplus grew by almost 17% to $6.1 billion.
And for the state-created Citizens Property Insurance Corp., its surplus rose by 17% to $5 billion.
Direct premium written climbed 19% for the national subsidiaries and 15% for the Florida-based carriers. Citizens DPW soared, by 59% in 2023, the report noted.
Some 28 of the 57 companies examined reported an underwriting gain, compared to just 15 carriers in 2022. Overall, the insurers reported a $69 million net income from underwriting, a big improvement over the year before. Florida specialist insurers saw a net underwriting loss of almost $400 million, but that was a much smaller loss than they felt the year before.
Overall, combined ratio fell sharply, from 134% in 2022 to a healthy 97%, Gallagher noted. Reinsurance utilization also fell for the overall market.
One question in the report was on Citizens takeouts. Gallagher noted that in 2023, Florida regulators approved 646,600 policies for takeout, but just 130,421 have been removed from Citizens so far – a rate of 20%. A Citizens report shows the assumption rate was 43%.
The full Gallagher Re report can be seen here.
Topics Florida Trends Carriers Data Driven
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