Florida Insurance Premiums Have Soared 206% Since DeSantis Became Governor

As Florida grapples with an unfolding property insurance crisis, recent data show that insurance premiums in the state have reportedly surged by over 200 percent since Ron DeSantis won the governor's office in 2018.

On average, Florida homeowners pay over $4,200 per year for home insurance, triple the national average of $1,700, according to data from the Insurance Information Institute (Triple I).

Insurance premiums have grown significantly since DeSantis won the gubernatorial race in late 2018, for a total of a 206 percent increase, as reported by Yahoo Finance—which makes them the highest in the entire country. In the last year alone, insurance premiums in the state surged by 42 percent.

The issue is likely to add pressure on DeSantis, now one of the many Republican candidates for the 2024 presidential election, especially as Florida has recently seen several insurers leaving the state.

Earlier this week, Farmers Insurance became the latest insurance company to pull out of the state, saying it will discontinue new coverage of auto, home and umbrella policies—a move that will reportedly affect 100,000 policies.

Critics have blamed DeSantis for failing to shore up the volatile market, saying he should have focused on making Florida's insurance affordable rather than getting involved in the so-called culture wars—and now campaigning in other states for the 2024 race.

Newsweek reached out to DeSantis' office via email for comment on Thursday.

But why are insurance premiums so high? Most of the four major insurers that left Florida in the past year mentioned the risk from hurricanes. But while extreme weather events like hurricanes, storms, floods, fires and droughts are pushing costs up, experts say that these are not the only reasons why insurance is so expensive in the state.

Florida leads the country in homeowners' insurance-related litigation, making up 79 percent of all related lawsuits across the nation while accounting for only 9 percent of the total claims, according to Triple I. That's due to fraudulent roof-replacement schemes and too much litigation, according to the institute, as well as high fees for insurance attorneys.

Logan McFaddin, vice president of state government relations at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, told Yahoo Finance that Florida's insurance crisis is "a man-made catastrophe" caused by the fact that the insurance market has become increasingly profitable in recent years.

Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis's press secretary, told the news outlet that the Republican governor is looking for ways to lower costs and draw more insurers to the state.

"We continue to work with the Office of Insurance Regulation to monitor the market's stability," he said. "Even the most aggressive reforms will take time."