PEMBROKE PARK, Fla. – State Representative Hilary Cassel (D) and former State Senator Jeff Brandes (R) joined This Week in South Florida to share the deepest knowledge of a complicated insurance market in South Florida.
Cassel, who is originally from Dania Beach, is also an attorney with a specialty in insurance law.
Brandes runs the Florida Policy Project, a not-for-profit aimed at educating and advising on some of the state’s biggest issues including property insurance.
The fallout continues after another major insurance company chose to pull out of Florida’s ailing property insurance market.
Farmers Insurance and AAA said this week they will no longer service the Florida insurance market, affecting thousands of automobile, home and umbrella insurance policyholders.
“This business decision was necessary to effectively manage risk exposure,” the company said in a statement.
Cassel, who has been critical of the recent reforms, explained why companies like Farmers and AAA are not able to wait it out.
“I think had the reforms litigation been the sole cause of the problem, we would see national carriers like AAA and Farmers, who have the capital to withstand that 18-to-24-month delay, they would be able to stay and wait it out,” she said in part.
“What they’re actually telling us is that litigation was never the sole factor and that’s something I’ve been advocating for years. While litigation was part of the problem, we needed to look to focus to other things that were driving the cost up and Farmers and AAA both said it was the high cost of re-insurance and the risk associated with writing in Florida as the reason that they’re leaving,” Cassel added.
When asked what is considered to be “high risk,” Brandes said that companies like Farmers and AAA “shift risk around the country all the time, so it’s not completely out of line for them to limit certain markets and grow other ones.”
“It takes 18 to 24 months, not from the day they passed the law, but from the day it becomes effective. It became effective in April, so it’s going to be mid-2025 until we see major rate relief, but we need to go a year or two without storms and additional complications,” he added.
They both joined This Week in South Florida host Glenna Milberg to discuss the ever-growing and unpredictable insurance market, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.