Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis’ 2024-2025 Focus on Florida’s Future budget invests millions in the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation’s (OIR) to bolster residential home mitigation programs in the state.
The OIR has primary responsibility for regulation, compliance, and enforcement of statutes related to the business of insurance and the monitoring of industry markets.
The budget is to invest over $237 million to support and strengthen Florida’s residential home mitigation programs.
This figure includes $1.1 million to boost the OIR’s ability to curate data related to Florida’s property insurance market. As well as $475,000 to contract with a reinsurance expert to analyse reinsurance cycles and how they are impacting property insurance rates.
In order to expand the Office’s ability to review filings and recommend new tools to mitigate properties from hurricanes, the budget has also allocated $675,000 to contract for independent reinsurance and mitigation research experts.
$200,000 are to be used for research and identify additional mitigation measures that provide discounts to consumers on their homeowners’ insurance premium.
While $500,000 have been allocated to study the impact of substantial improvement periods on community rating system discounts and insurance rates as calculated by FEMA and Florida’s local floodplain managers.
The budget also provides an additional $6 million increase for the Florida International University to upgrade and enhance the capabilities of the Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model to improve the geographic assessments and to include perils not currently contemplated in the model.
Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky has expressed his support for DeStantis’ 2024-2025 Focus on Florida’s Future budget. He commented: “Governor DeSantis’ budget strengthens the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation’s (OIR) ability to protect consumers and foster a market where insurance products are reliable, available, and affordable for Floridians.
“OIR is a national leader in identifying market trends and taking bold action because we collect more data about our insurance market than any other state or regulatory entity. Expanding our research and data collection capabilities will allow us to better understand the factors impacting our market so that we can make data-driven decisions to ensure Floridians benefit from a stable and competitive insurance market. I thank Governor DeSantis for his leadership and ongoing commitment to Florida’s policyholders.”