Citizens Property Insurance customers in Miami-Dade, Broward should see premiums drop

Most Miami-Dade and Broward County homeowners with state-run Citizens Property Insurance will see their premiums go down this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Wednesday.

In Miami-Dade, 73 percent of its policyholders will see premiums go down by an average of 6.3 percent, he said. In Broward, about half of homeowners will see a 4.5 percent decrease.

“That’s something that’s very, very meaningful,” DeSantis said during a news conference.

The surprising announcement, after years of double-digit rate hikes, is the result of state regulators trimming back a bigger rate request by Citizens’ board last year.

Citizens’ board decided in June to seek an overall 14 percent rate increase for 2025, the maximum allowed under state law.

The company wasn’t seeking a rate decrease anywhere, Citizens CEO Tim Cerio told lawmakers on Tuesday.

But its roughly 173,000 policies Miami-Dade County is a unique situation, he said. Unlike most of the state, the company is more than actuarily sound there, meaning it makes more than enough to cover expected expenses in the county.

Still, the premiums it is charging in Miami-Dade are much better than premiums being charged by private insurers. That’s a problem as the company tries to shed policies to the private market.

Private insurers can take policies from Citizens if they offer a policy within 20 percent of Citizens’ rate — so the cheaper Citizens is, the less enticing that policy is to a private insurer.

“We’re way too competitive there. We’re too cheap,” Cerio said.

Cerio credited the situation to laws passed by the Legislature making it harder to sue insurance companies.

“Miami-Dade was a hotbed of litigation,” Cerio said.

DeSantis also credited the fact that South Florida hasn’t been directly hit by a hurricane in years.

“It’s justifiable to say that those rates should go down,” DeSantis said.

The lower rates are a sign that the state’s insurance market for both homeowners and auto policies is stabilizing, he said. Geico, State Farm and Allstate have requested statewide rate decreases of between 6 percent and 10.5 percent, DeSantis said.

“We’re truly seeing good news emerge on every front,” Office of Insurance Regulation Commissioner Mike Yaworsky said Wednesday.

State regulators also ordered Citizens to trim its rates in 2023.

Citizens’ Board of Governors is made up of lawyers and business executives appointed by DeSantis and other Republican elected officials.

This story was originally published February 5, 2025 at 3:38 PM.