ORLANDO, Fla. – There is a high chance that if you own a home, then you will have faced pressure from your insurance company to pay for a new roof. So, when Florida’s top insurance chief suggested it may be time to start phasing out asphalt shingles there was an immediate reaction statewide.
News 6 previously reported on the comments made by Commissioner Mike Yaworsky at an annual Chamber of Commerce Insurance Summit in Orlando in December. Yaworsky told attendees “it’s probably time to look past asphalt shingles.”
“You know, these products that are guaranteed to last for 30 years. They don’t last for 30 years in Florida. They just don’t,” he continued.
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Tuesday, he told our News 6 crew that those statements were meant to encourage a discussion about resiliency, home hardening, and ultimately encourage consumers to look at what options might be best for their homes.
“There is no toggle switch to suddenly change roof types, for example, as we’re talking about that now, just like there was no toggle switch two decades ago to mandate $2 hurricane clips on the top of roofs,” said Yaworsky. “It’s when you’re in this space, you’re talking, you have to take a very long, decades long view about things and sort of allow the economy and reality to kind of meet in the middle down the road.”
Yaworsky said the state is seeing “good news” as a whole when it comes to the insurance market. Just last week, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that Citizens Property Insurance rates will decrease by an average of 5.6% statewide.
“We can’t control storms. We can’t control inflation nationwide. There’s a lot of things we can’t control nationwide, but providing a solid marketplace is one,” said Gov. Desantis.
The state-backed insurer of last resort now has a policy count below one million for the first time in more than two years. Commissioner Yaworsky said they are now down to 932,000 policies as Florida’s property insurance market continues to stabilize.
“We’ve had 11 new companies into the state of Florida during that same time period. Our current companies, 60% of our top ten writers, are expanding their space in Florida. And 40% of those have filed for either reductions or 0% increase in their rates,” said Yaworsky. “Overall, I’ve approved 70 rate reductions or 0% over the course of 2024, and we’re just seeing continued interest in Florida that we haven’t seen in years.”
Both the governor and the insurance commissioner credited reforms made by the legislature for the improvements seen in the market as a whole.
Yaworsky said right now the largest private carrier in Florida is State Farm. When asked if anything more can be done to encourage more major carriers to do business in Florida, he said it’s important to have a “healthy mix.”
“A lot of them are smaller,” said Yaworsky. “If you look at the mix, Florida’s insurance market is probably the most unique in the world in that we have a kind of different mix of large and small companies that are operating in the state.”
Commissioner Yaworsky said other companies are watching to see the positive regulatory environment, and that should encourage them to commit to Florida.
“We definitely had a lot of capital come into the state, but a lot of companies are sitting and waiting to see what does this look like long term? Is the legislature going to do anything or the governor or the insurance commissioner going to do anything to change course again, rapidly, unexpectedly? They’re waiting to see what’s happening there before I think some of them fully commit.”
Yaworsky said he would encourage legislators to stay on the current course.
“I think it’s the right course,” said Yaworsky. “We’re in a fairly good place and we just need to see that relief really start to be felt by policyholders.”
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