Florida homeowners were paying some of the highest insurance premiums in the world three years ago.
Now Ron DeSantis just sat down at Lloyd's of London – the 337-year-old institution that backs the world's biggest risks – to tell them Florida is open for business again.
And Lloyd's was listening to everything Ron DeSantis had to say about Florida’s insurance market.
What Broke Florida's Insurance Market in the First Place
The story starts with trial lawyers.
For years, Florida accounted for roughly 76% of all homeowners insurance lawsuits filed in the entire country – despite representing less than 7% of the nation's claims.
Read that again.
One state. Three-quarters of the country's insurance lawsuits.
The mechanism was a legal trick called "one-way attorney fees."
Plaintiffs' lawyers could collect fees from insurers no matter how a case resolved – even if the insurer won.
File enough cases and you made money regardless of outcome.
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So lawyers filed everything. Assignment-of-benefits abuse piled on top: contractors would get homeowners to sign over their insurance rights, then file massive inflated claims and threaten to sue anyone who pushed back.
The result was predictable.
More than a dozen Florida property insurers went insolvent or stopped writing policies altogether.
Citizens Property Insurance – the state-run insurer of last resort – swelled to 1.4 million policies by late 2023.
Premiums were doubling and tripling. South Florida homeowners couldn't get competitive coverage for homes that weren't remotely in the same price range as coastal properties in California or New York.
Reinsurers in London – the global capital markets that back local insurance companies – quietly started pulling back from Florida exposure.
When they did, local insurers lost their safety net and more folded.
That's how a state with the 7th largest insurance market in the world ended up looking like an uninvestable basket case.
DeSantis Fixed It and Has the Numbers to Prove It
In December 2022, DeSantis and the legislature enacted Senate Bill 2A – eliminating one-way attorney fees outright and banning the assignment-of-benefits practices that had fueled the litigation explosion.
Follow-up legislation in 2023 tightened bad-faith standards and created safe harbor provisions for insurers who tendered policy limits within 90 days.
The lawsuits collapsed.
Insurance litigation filings fell 23% between 2023 and 2024 – then dropped another 25% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period the year before.
Personal auto liability loss ratios hit the lowest level in Florida in 15 years.
Property insurers reported $954 million in net income in 2024, swinging from a $741 million loss in 2022.
Seventeen new insurers entered the Florida market. Citizens fell from 1.4 million policies to 395,144 as of January 2025 – the lowest level in 14 years – as homeowners moved back to private coverage.
In January 2026, DeSantis announced Citizens policyholders would see an average 8.7% rate cut statewide, with South Florida homeowners seeing reductions of 13.4%. Over 150,000 policyholders received cuts of 10% or more.
Independent economic research from the Perryman Group found insurance costs across Florida have declined roughly 14%, generating an estimated $4.2 billion in additional economic activity and nearly 30,000 new jobs.
What the London Trip Actually Means
DeSantis didn't fly to London to beg for business.
He flew there to show the global capital markets that the state they quietly gave up on is now worth re-entering – and to build the kind of institutional relationships that keep Florida's reforms locked in against the next political wind shift.
Lloyd's isn't just an insurance company.
It's the marketplace where the world's toughest risks get priced.
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When Lloyd's syndicates decide a market is worth backing, capital follows. When they pull back, markets spiral.
Florida has been on the wrong end of that dynamic for a decade.
The discussions in London – including a potential research partnership through the Lloyd's Lab innovation program and a fireside chat with the Lady Mayor of the City of London, Dame Susan Langley – signal that the world's reinsurance capital is taking Florida seriously again.
Florida International University's Wall of Wind facility, which can generate Category 5 hurricane conditions to stress-test full-scale structures, added scientific credibility to the pitch that Florida isn't just papering over old problems.
What it means that this trip happened at all is the real story.
Three years ago, Florida was the cautionary tale – the state where trial lawyers had extracted so much from the system that global insurers stopped writing policies entirely.
DeSantis didn't just stabilize it.
He turned it around decisively enough that Lloyd's of London is now sitting across the table taking notes.
The trial lawyers spent a decade treating Florida homeowners like a piggy bank.
DeSantis spent two years making them pay it back.
Sources:
- Florida Office of the Governor, "Governor Ron DeSantis and Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky Host Meetings in London," July 22, 2026.
- Florida Office of the Governor, "Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Major Insurance Rate Relief as Florida's Reforms Deliver Results," January 12, 2026.
- Insurance Information Institute, "Florida Premiums Drop Amid Post-Reform Stability," March 31, 2026.
- Gallagher Re, Florida Tort Reform: A Sunshine Success Story, October 2025.
- Insurance News Net, "Florida Reforms Stabilizing Insurance Markets," March 4, 2026.
