The number of Florida claims from Hurricane Debby, filed within 10 days of the storm, stood at almost two-thirds of the number of claims filed from Hurricane Idalia in a three-month period.

Debby claims by Aug. 16 had reached almost 16,500, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation reported after compiling required data from property insurers. Idalia, which pummeled the same region of the state in 2022, produced 25,047 claims by Nov. 16, 10 weeks after landfall.

The surprising number of early claims from Debby came despite Idalia being a stronger Category 3 storm, with almost expected wind damage in the Big Bend area of the state. The value of those Debby claims was just over $116 million. That’s more than a third of the value of Idalia claims after 10 weeks.

OIR officials did not speculate on reasons for the quick surge in claims from Debby. It could be that property owners learned from Idalia to file claims quickly, but that some homes raked by Idalia received secondary damage in Debby. Debby may also have brought more damage to more populated areas near Tampa, although many of those will be for flood damage.

The numbers came out after Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky posted a bulletin noting more encouraging signs that Florida’s property insurance market is on the mend after legislative changes in 2022 and 2023.

Yaworsky said that State Farm and Progressive insurance companies had recently pledged to continue writing property in Florida, and another new company, Trident Reinsurance Exchange, has been approved. Trident is the ninth new company to be approved for Florida in the last year.

“Today’s announcements are a further indication of the continued strengthening of Florida’s property insurance market,” said Yaworsky, who met with Progressive executives in early August. “OIR will continue to work with Florida-based and national carriers, like Progressive, to recruit and retain business so that all Floridians may benefit from a strong market.”

He highlighted other positive signs:

• Rate increases have slowed: Over the past six months, the average rate increase request for homeowners insurance in Florida is about half what it had been in recent years. Year-to-date average rate increases are much as 56%. A year ago, the 30-day average rate increase request from carriers was 7.6%. Yaworsky said.
• Reinsurance: Early results from some reinsurance treaties signed this summer indicate that costs for Florida-based companies decreased an average of 1.7% from 2023 – the first decrease in years.
• Policies in force: As of Q1 2024, 7.43 million residential insurance policies were in force in Florida. Some 83% of those are written by admitted property insurers, as opposed to surplus lines companies or the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Recent data from the Florida Surplus Lines Service Office shows, however, that for personal and commercial coverage, surplus lines’ share of the market has continued to grow in the last six years.
• Citizens depopulation: So far this year, OIR has approved 768,692 takeouts from Citizens to private carriers, an 855% increase over 2022’s takeout numbers. But only 132,445 policies have actually been accepted or removed from Citizens, OIR has reported. Some homeowners have said that premiums offered by private insurers on takeouts were many times higher than Citizens, the South Florida Sun Sentinel recently reported.

As of the end of June, Citizens reported 1.2 million policies in force.