Florida's Insurer-of-Last-Resort Fund Paid Out $2.1 Billion. The Surcharge That Funded It Ends Two Years Early.
Summary
Ten Florida homeowners insurers collapsed between 2021 and 2023, leaving the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association to pay their policyholders' claims. FIGA has paid more than $2.1 billion in claims over the past five years — including $1.6 billion on just seven of those failures, covering 47,318 claims. On February 20, 2026, its board voted to end the 1% emergency assessment charged on every Florida property policy two years ahead of schedule, saving households and businesses up to $650 million through 2028.
Follow the dollar
FIGA doesn't collect premiums or write policies. It collects money from three places — a surcharge on every Florida property policy, whatever Florida can recover from a failed insurer's remaining assets, and interest on what it's holding — and pays it out as claims. In 2024, the FIGA Annual Report shows those three sources bringing in $776.2 million: $321.1 million from policyholder assessments, $427.7 million recovered from 17 insolvent insurers' estates, and $27.4 million in investment income.
View data as table
| Policyholder assessments | $321.1M | revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Insolvent-insurer estate distributions | $427.7M | revenue |
| Investment income | $27.4M | revenue |
| Claims paid to policyholders | $510.4M | of total funding |
| Held back — claim reserves & bond debt service | $265.8M | of total funding |
Of that $776.2 million, $510.4 million went straight out the door in 2024 as paid claims — $498.2 million in losses, $11.3 million in claim-handling fees, and $0.9 million in returned "unearned premium" refunds to policyholders whose insurer folded mid-policy. The rest, $265.8 million, stayed inside FIGA: $146 million in reserves for the 3,436 claims still open at year-end, and debt service on the $600 million in bonds FIGA issued in 2023 to cover claims immediately rather than wait on the surcharge to trickle in — of which $540 million was still outstanding at the end of 2024.
The wave that forced it
The money didn't get large because FIGA grew. It got large because insurers failed, one after another, faster than the state had seen in decades. Seven of the ten insolvencies — St. Johns, Avatar, Lighthouse, Southern Fidelity, Weston, and FedNat in 2022, then United Property & Casualty Insurance Company (UPC) in early 2023 — together generated 47,318 claims and $1.6 billion in incurred losses, all still being worked through FIGA's books in 2024. UPC alone had 146,260 policyholders across six states when it was liquidated on February 27, 2023, including 53,721 Florida policies and 15,140 open Florida claims on that date; by the end of 2024 that claim count had grown to 24,875, with $720 million in total incurred losses on UPC's book alone.
View data as table
| 2021 | $153.3M |
|---|---|
| 2022 | $664.8M |
| 2023 | $745.2M |
| 2024 | $510.4M |
Payments rose almost fivefold from $153.3 million in 2021 to $745.2 million in 2023, the year UPC went under, then eased to $510.4 million in 2024 — the first year since 2021 with no new insolvency added to FIGA's caseload. That decline, sustained through the entire 2025 hurricane season, is what let FIGA's board conclude the emergency surcharge had done its job early.
The bill comes down
The 1% emergency assessment has applied to nearly every Florida homeowners and business property policy since October 1, 2023, funding the $600 million in bonds issued that year. It was Florida's fourth consecutive year of a policyholder assessment: 0.70% in 2021, a combined 2.0% in 2022 (a 1.3% and a 0.70% assessment layered on top of each other), then 1.0% in 2023. Under the board's February 2026 vote, the 1% surcharge still applies to policies renewing through September 30, 2026, but drops to zero after that — two years before the bonds' original 2028 payoff date — saving Florida homeowners and businesses up to $650 million through September 30, 2028, according to FIGA's own announcement. FIGA credits faster-than-projected assessment collections — plus, as Florida Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworski put it, insurance-market reforms enacted by the legislature in 2022 that have kept new insolvencies from adding to the bill.
The takeaway
- The insurer-of-last-resort fund did exactly what it was built for. Ten homeowners insurers collapsed in three years; FIGA paid the claims those companies couldn't, funding it with a surcharge every Florida policyholder paid, not a state bailout.
- The bill was concentrated in a handful of failures. Seven insolvencies — one of them, UPC, alone touching 146,260 policyholders — account for $1.6 billion of FIGA's $2.1 billion in five-year claims payments.
- The surcharge is ending because the failures stopped, not because the debt disappeared. FIGA still had $540 million in bonds outstanding at the end of 2024; ending the assessment early means it collected enough, faster than planned, to retire that debt on schedule anyway.
Figures cover FIGA's own accounting years (calendar years) and its "Homeowners" and "All Other" assessment accounts combined unless a single insolvency is named; FIGA's separate Auto Claims Account, resolving two 2020 Windhaven liquidations, is not included in the totals above.
Sources
- Florida Insurance Guaranty Association — press release, FIGA Ends Emergency Assessment Two Years Early (Feb. 20, 2026) — the assessment end date, the $650 million savings estimate, the "10 homeowners insurance companies" framing, and the $2.1 billion five-year claims-paid figure. figafacts.com
- FIGA — 2024 Annual Report — 2024 funding sources ($321.1M assessments / $427.7M estate distributions / $27.4M investment income), net claims paid by year 2023–2024, the seven 2022–23 insolvencies' combined 47,318 claims and $1.6 billion in incurred losses, UPC's policyholder and claims detail, and outstanding bond balances. figafacts.com
- FIGA — 2023 Annual Report — 2023 net paid on claims ($745.2 million) and the prior-year comparison to 2022. figafacts.com
- FIGA — 2022 Annual Report — 2022 net paid on claims ($664.8 million) and the prior-year comparison to 2021. figafacts.com
- FIGA — Assessments page — the year-by-year history of FIGA's emergency and regular assessment rates, 2009–2026, and which insolvencies each one funded. figafacts.com
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Every state runs a fund that nobody notices until an insurer fails. In Florida, that fund is the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association (FIGA) — created by the legislature in 1970 to make sure a homeowner's claim still gets paid after their insurance company doesn't exist anymore. For most of FIGA's history it was a quiet backstop. Between 2021 and 2023 it became the main event: ten Florida homeowners insurers were declared insolvent, and FIGA had to fund their unpaid claims itself. On February 20, 2026, FIGA's board decided that job is basically done — and voted to end the policyholder surcharge that paid for it two years ahead of schedule.