As Florida's 2026 gubernatorial race takes shape, insurance affordability has emerged as one of the central issues of the campaign, with candidates across the political spectrum proposing distinct approaches to the state's homeowners and auto insurance markets.
Independent candidate Frank Russo (pictured, left), who has more than 30 years of experience in the insurance industry, unveiled a Home and Auto Insurance Reform Plan this week.
The proposal includes exploring legislation for a dedicated hurricane-only insurance policy, subject to legislative action and actuarial review, alongside a "Florida Insurance Consumer Bill of Rights" that would guarantee consumers the right to know why premiums increase, the right to appeal insurance decisions, and the right to policies written in plain English.
On auto insurance, Russo has proposed reviewing duplicate mandatory coverages for drivers who already carry qualifying health insurance and strengthening consumers' rights to appeal premium increases and non-renewals.
US Representative Byron Donalds (pictured, center), the Trump-endorsed frontrunner in the Republican primary, has proposed an "Insurer Scorecard" initiative intended to modernize and relaunch the state's CHOICES Rate Comparison tool. The plan would combine pricing data with insurer performance metrics, such as claims approval rates and time to payment, into a single public dashboard.
Donalds has said the goal is to let consumers compare insurers before purchasing a policy, driving competition and downward pressure on premiums. He has also said he wants to revisit Florida's property insurance regulatory framework more broadly, arguing it has not been substantially updated in nearly 25 years, and has suggested such changes could reduce rates by as much as 20%, while continuing to point to the state's Cat Fund as a stabilizing mechanism for major hurricane losses.
Former congressman David Jolly (pictured, right), a leading candidate in the Democratic primary, has proposed a more structurally different approach: a state catastrophic fund that would remove hurricane and other natural disaster coverage from the private insurance market entirely.
Under Jolly's proposal, private insurers would continue covering perils such as fire and theft, while the state would assume responsibility for storm losses through a fund he has said would need to reach the $30 billion to $40 billion range to fully cover natural disaster risk. Jolly has argued the approach could cut private insurance premiums by 60% to 70%, since hurricane exposure, the most expensive risk category for insurers, would no longer sit on private balance sheets.
Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute has said state-backed solutions for insurance are not an effective model, and industry figures have pointed to the National Flood Insurance Program, which carries substantial federal debt, as evidence that government-run catastrophe coverage can become financially unsustainable over time.
Jolly's proposal would substantially expand a role Florida already assigns to a state entity. The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF), a tax-exempt state trust fund created in 1993, currently provides mandatory reimbursement to residential property insurers for a portion of their hurricane losses, operating similarly to reinsurance but at lower cost than the private market.
For the 2026-2027 contract year, the FHCF projects a fund balance of roughly $11.26 billion and total available liquid resources of approximately $13.51 billion, against a maximum statutory liability of $17.40 billion, meaning the fund may need to rely on post-event bonding and emergency assessments if a storm of moderate to significant magnitude strikes.
The Florida Legislature has also been considering changes that would nearly double the FHCF's industry retention threshold, from $4.5 billion to $8.5 billion, alongside a new 100% coverage option for insurers, changes that would shift more risk onto private carriers before the fund's coverage triggers.
The proposals arrive as Florida's property insurance market has shown signs of stabilizing under the current regulatory framework. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation approved statewide rate decreases for 2026, with multiperil policyholders seeing an average reduction of 8.8%, the first such decrease since 2015, which state officials have attributed to 2022 and 2023 tort reforms that reduced litigation costs for insurers.
Citizens' policy count has fallen to around 336,000, down from a peak of 1.41 million in October 2023, as policies have shifted back to the private market. New reinsurers have also continued entering the Florida market, encouraged by the reforms, with Florida insurers expected to seek an additional $5 billion to $7 billion of reinsurance at the 2026 midyear renewals amid generally favorable capacity conditions.
The range of proposals reflects genuinely different philosophies for addressing Florida's insurance affordability challenge.
Russo's consumer-protection and transparency framework, Donalds' data-driven, market-based comparison tool built on existing reforms, and Jolly's more sweeping restructuring that would extend the state's existing catastrophe-fund role into full risk transfer, an approach industry figures have already begun to challenge. Each proposal would require legislative action, and in some cases actuarial review, before taking effect, and none currently represents Florida law.
For insurance professionals, the contrasting approaches, and their relationship to an already-evolving FHCF structure, underscore that affordability is likely to remain a defining issue in the race through the August 18 primaries and November general election, regardless of which model ultimately gains legislative traction.
