Key Takeaways
- Florida reinsurance costs fell 15-20% at the June 1, 2026 renewal — the steepest decline since 2014 — but carrier rate filings with the Florida OIR take months to process, so most policyholders won’t see savings on their renewal bill until late 2026 at the earliest.
- Several carriers have already filed for rate decreases: Florida Peninsula filed for 8.4% statewide, Security First for 8%, Citizens for 2.6%, and Heritage was approved for 3.3%. If you’re with one of these carriers, check your next renewal notice.
- If your policy renews in the next 60 days and your carrier hasn’t filed a rate decrease, you can shop the market — 17 new companies have entered Florida since 2022, and competition is real for the first time in years.
- The structural improvement is real: Florida domestic insurers posted a 77% combined ratio in 2025, down from 114% in 2022, and litigation has dropped roughly 66% from peak. This isn’t a blip.
Florida property catastrophe reinsurance pricing fell 15% to 20% at the June 1, 2026 renewals, according to Guy Carpenter’s June 2026 Florida Reinsurance Renewal Report. That’s the steepest risk-adjusted decline in U.S. property cat reinsurance pricing since 2014, and it affects the single biggest cost input for every Florida homeowners insurance carrier. Whether it affects your premium is a different question.
The Guy Carpenter U.S. Property Catastrophe Rate-on-Line Index fell 14% through the first half of 2026. Guy Carpenter clients secured 12% more Florida property catastrophe reinsurance capacity at the June 1 renewal compared to the prior year. Randy Fuller, Guy Carpenter’s Florida Segment Leader, described Florida’s property market as being on “markedly stronger footing”, a phrase that would have seemed absurd three years ago when Florida domestic carriers were posting a 114% combined ratio and litigation was strangling the market.
The numbers behind that turnaround are striking. Florida domestic underwriters’ combined ratio improved from 114% in 2022 to 96% in 2023, then 92% in 2024, and 77% in 2025. Policyholders’ surplus surged 45%, adding $1.9 billion, at year-end 2025 versus the prior year. Litigation dropped roughly 66% from its peak following the 2022 legal reforms. A third-party analysis cited by Insurance Journal estimates P&C insurance costs in Florida are now approximately 14.5% lower than they would have been without those reforms.
What cheaper reinsurance actually means for your bill
Here’s how reinsurance savings actually move, or don’t, into your renewal letter. When a carrier buys cheaper reinsurance at the June 1 renewal, that lower cost doesn’t automatically show up in rates. The carrier has to file a rate change with the Florida OIR, get it approved, and then implement it on new and renewal policies. That process runs three to six months at minimum, sometimes longer if the OIR has questions about the actuarial support. Meanwhile, the carrier is writing policies under the old approved rates and keeping the margin difference. When I worked at an independent agency in the Midwest, we’d see this exact pattern after regional carriers had a good cat year, the filings for rate decreases would come six to nine months after the favorable loss experience, and only after we started asking about it. The good news in Florida is that several carriers didn’t wait: Florida Peninsula filed for 8.4% statewide decreases and Security First filed for 8% before the reinsurance renewal even hit. But those are the early movers. Many policyholders won’t see the benefit until late 2026 or early 2027.
Citizens Property Insurance, the state-backed insurer of last resort, voted in December 2025 to file for an average 2.6% personal lines rate decrease effective June 2026. Citizens is now down to roughly 336,000 policies, a 76% reduction from its peak, after more than 1.4 million policies moved to the private market since 2022. Heritage Insurance was already approved by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation for a 3.3% decrease.
TD Cowen’s analysis from May 28, 2026 projected that Florida homeowners carriers expect rate cuts of 3% to 5% broadly as competition intensifies. Seventeen new companies have entered the Florida market since 2022. Three of them, People’s Trust Insurance, Olympus Insurance, and Mangrove Insurance, appeared as first-time sponsors in the $3.2 billion of Florida-focused catastrophe bonds issued year-to-date through May 12, 2026. New money entering the cat bond market for Florida-specific risk is a leading indicator of where reinsurer confidence is heading.
What the Florida OIR is doing
Florida OIR Commissioner Mike Yaworsky and his office have been reviewing the incoming rate decrease filings on the standard timeline. The OIR isn’t expediting the reviews in any announced way, which is worth watching. When the market was hardening in 2022 and 2023, rate increase filings moved through quickly under political pressure to acknowledge the market crisis. Rate decrease filings don’t carry the same urgency, and carriers know it. The savings can sit in the pipeline for months without regulatory consequence. The OIR has not announced any mechanism to accelerate policyholder benefit from the reinsurance improvement, and the absence of that kind of action is notable.
For Florida homeowners, the practical implication depends on when your policy renews and which carrier you’re with. If you’re with Florida Peninsula, Security First, Heritage, or Citizens, a filed or approved rate decrease is already in motion. Ask your agent or insurer when it takes effect on your specific policy. If you’re with a carrier that hasn’t filed anything, the reinsurance savings may still be working their way through the actuarial process, or the carrier may be holding the margin. You won’t know from the press release. You’ll know from the renewal letter.
If your policy renews in the next 60 to 90 days and you haven’t seen a rate decrease, shop it. The Florida market has more competition than it’s had in a decade. Homeowners insurance quotes from carriers that have already filed decreases are a legitimate benchmark, and the best homeowners insurance options in Florida now include carriers that simply didn’t exist in this market two years ago.
The structural improvement in Florida’s insurance market is real, and the reinsurance pricing data confirms it. The 2022 legal reforms did what they were designed to do. What’s less certain is how much of the resulting savings reaches policyholders versus gets captured as carrier margin during the approval delay. That’s the question to watch on every renewal letter you get this year.
