Florida's Insurer of Last Resort Shed 1.1 Million Policies in Two Years

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation was created by the Florida Legislature in 2002 as a not-for-profit insurer of last resort — coverage for homeowners who could not find a private company willing to write a policy.▸ By October 2023, after a run of hurricanes and private-carrier exits, Citizens had grown into something closer to the state's largest insurer. Its own numbers now record the reversal: Citizens reports its policy count fell from 1.4 million in late 2023 to approximately 274,000 by June 2026 — a drop of more than 1.1 million policies, or roughly 80%, leaving Citizens with about 2% of Florida's residential property insurance market. Over the same stretch, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation counts 20 new property and casualty insurers entering the state since 2022's legislative reforms, bringing more than $850 million in new capital to underwrite the policies Citizens shed.

Citizens exists to hold policies the private market won't. When the private market retreats, Citizens grows; when it returns, Citizens is supposed to shrink.▸ A Dec. 4, 2024 Citizens release put the count at 987,650 as of November 29, 2024 — a 19.5% drop from January of that year — and credited the Citizens Depopulation Program, which had by then transferred more than 428,000 policies to private insurers approved by the state. Citizens' president and CEO, Tim Cerio, told the board at the time: "As Citizens shrinks, so does the risk of assessments on Floridians who are not Citizens policyholders. This should be welcome news to all" — a reference to Citizens' authority to levy emergency assessments on nearly every property policy in the state if it runs short after a major storm. By its own June 2026 count, Citizens had kept falling, to about 274,000 policies.

The depopulation program only works if a private insurer is willing and solvent enough to take the policies.▸ OIR's May 20, 2026 announcement of three more entrants — Builder Reciprocal Insurance Exchange, Frontline Insurance Reciprocal Exchange, and Wingsail Insurance Company — brought the total to 20 new companies writing property coverage since the reforms, together carrying in more than $850 million of new capital. The same release notes the number of condo-association wind-only writers in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties grew from one to five, a market Citizens had "primarily" carried alone before the reforms.

Citizens, meanwhile, is carrying less risk on a smaller base.▸ Its 2026 hurricane-season capital stack combines its own reserves with reinsurance bought on the private and capital markets and a draw on the state's catastrophe fund:

That $9.6 billion is built from a $5.34 billion surplus, $2.82 billion in reinsurance ($1.29 billion newly bought for 2026 on top of $1.53 billion already in force), and $1.44 billion drawn from the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund.▸ Citizens says the package protects 77% of its surplus against a 1-in-100-year storm — a higher bar than either Hurricane Andrew (roughly a 1-in-43-year event) or Hurricane Ian (roughly 1-in-20 to 1-in-25-year), the two storms most responsible for the crisis that built Citizens up in the first place.

The clearest sign of what changed is on insurers' own books.▸ OIR reports Florida domestic property companies' pooled combined ratio — claims plus expenses as a share of premium collected, where anything above 100% is an underwriting loss — fell from 116% in 2020 to 83% in 2025, meaning the industry moved from paying out more than it collected to keeping roughly 17 cents of every premium dollar after claims and expenses.

Rate relief for homeowners has moved more slowly.▸ The same OIR release reports more than 190 residential rate filings requesting decreases or 0% increases since the reforms took effect, with the 30-day average homeowners' rate request now at -1.2% (compared with -0.3% a year earlier) and the 180-day average at -2.9% (compared with +0.7% a year earlier, and +6.6% three years earlier). Filed requests are not final approved rates, and OIR does not report what homeowners' bills actually did over that period in this release — only the direction and size of what insurers are asking to charge.

Figures are drawn from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation and Florida Office of Insurance Regulation releases published between December 2024 and June 2026, each cited to its own reporting date; no single document contains every number in this piece.