Citizens Property Insurance Corp., Florida’s insurer of last resort, is shedding customers amid more private competition. And for the roughly 380,000 people left, Gov. Ron DeSantis would like to see rates reduced further.
“They had all these people paying in for these years, right? And now they’re not exposed to those people’s risk anymore,” DeSantis said during a Cabinet meeting in Tallahassee.
“I know some of the areas they have are hard to insure, like the Keys, but it seems to me that there’s some more downward room to get lower rates, even for our Citizens policyholders.”
Some customers saw reductions of up to 10% in 2025, and DeSantis would like that momentum to continue for homesteads.
“Why would you give the same reduction to a vacation home as you do to someone’s primary residence? You could do a big cut in primary residences,” DeSantis said.
“You could definitely prevent any increase in the Keys, you know, if you wanted to, particularly for primary homes. … You can’t be taking in all this money, and then now you have a million less people on there. And so your risk has gone down. Well, then what you’re charging these people should probably go down too. So I’d like to see that, and I think that I think a lot of people would appreciate it, particularly in places like South Florida.”
Arguably, a move like this could hurt depopulation of the company DeSantis repeatedly said was hurtling toward insolvency just a couple of years ago, given it would offer incentives to block private companies recently recruited to the state.
Private insurers have the option of charging up to 20% of Citizens’ quote and taking the customer.
