As state lawmakers prepare for their special session on Florida’s property insurance crisis, recent data shows a continuing upward tick in litigated property claims, suggesting that past civil litigation reforms have not produced their desired results.
April litigated claims data from CaseGlide, a claims litigation software platform, shows a 3% increase over the March data from Florida’s largest property insurers. The April numbers represent a continuation of a three-month rise in litigated claims and a 42% increase over last December’s litigated claims, according to CaseGlide.
The property insurance industry has blamed abusive litigation carried out by bad actors who know how to game the insurance system for increasing home insurance rates in Florida. According to the Governor’s Office, property insurers in the state have endured two straight years of losses exceeding $1 million per year.
Since reform legislation – Senate Bill 76 – took effect last year, policyholders have been required to also file notices of intent to initiate litigation (NOIs) before arguing their claims in court. NOIs decreased 12% in April compared with the previous month, according to CaseGlide.
“We’re hopeful the upcoming Florida Legislature’s special session can bring relief to the Florida property market,” Wesley Todd, CaseGlide’s CEO, said in a statement emailed to the Florida Record. “We’re back to the litigation volume we saw when we first started talking about SB 76, and that doesn’t include the substantial amount of notices of intent to litigate on their way to becoming lawsuits.”
Litigated cases continue to be concentrated in Miami-Dade County (23% of new litigated cases), Broward County (16%), Hillsborough County (8%), and Palm Beach and Orange counties (both at 7%), CaseGlide reported.
Gov. Ron DeSantis called for the special session to address property insurance issues amid a number of concerning statistics. One indication of upheaval in the private insurance market is that state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has seen an increase of nearly 400,000 policies since the start of 2020, according to the Governor’s Office. Citizens is on track to take on 1 million policies by the end of 2022.
To combat these trends, a number of legislative reforms have been advanced by Florida’s chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, including an increase in criminal investigations into possible fraud. The reforms include launching three addition anti-fraud units in Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Miami; an anti-fraud education campaign to caution homeowners not to sign away their rights to third parties; creating monetary rewards for those who provide tips about insurance fraud; and reforming the state’s assignment-of-benefits (AOB) law.