American Coastal Insurance Corporation (ACIC) has received a certificate of authority from the Arizona Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions for ACES Specialty Insurance Company, its newly formed surplus lines subsidiary.
ACES expects to begin writing catastrophe-exposed commercial E&S property business in Florida, Texas, and South Carolina on or about December 1, subject to regulatory, rating agency, and other operational requirements. ACIC capitalized ACES with a $30 million cash contribution. The carrier will operate alongside Skyway Underwriters, ACIC’s in-house managing general agency, which handles production and underwriting.
Wholesale brokers will access ACES through Skyway, which serves as the exclusive production and underwriting arm for the new carrier. ACIC has also flagged that, until ACES carries a rating agency designation, certain lender-required placements — particularly in habitational segments — may sit outside its reach. The company described ACES in its Q2 2026 earnings call as a vehicle for “rating-sensitive commercial property business,” signaling that securing a rating is part of the operational pathway ahead of the December 1 launch.
Brad Martz, ACIC’s president and CEO, said the platform was built carefully and with purpose, and that ACES would allow the company to serve a wider range of commercial property risks in markets it knows well.
From admitted carrier to E&S platform
ACIC has held the number one market share in admitted commercial residential property insurance in Florida since its founding in 2007, writing primarily condominiums, homeowner associations, and apartment buildings through an exclusive distribution partnership with AmRisc, one of the largest catastrophe-focused managing general agencies in the country.
That partnership was restructured in September 2026 to remove its fixed expiration date, replaced with successive one-year terms requiring 48 months’ notice to terminate. That structure effectively makes AmRisc ACIC’s permanent distribution anchor for its core Florida admitted business.
ACES runs on a separate track. Earlier in 2026, ACIC entered a 6% quota share participation in AmRisc’s nationwide E&S commercial property portfolio, projected to generate approximately $75 million in gross written premium for ACIC this year. ACES gives the company a direct underwriting platform on top of that arrangement, with a long-term ambition to expand into additional classes and geographies beyond the three launch states.
The choice of Florida, Texas, and South Carolina reflects where ACIC has existing underwriting experience and where admitted carriers have pulled back from property lines. ACIC’s January 2026 investor presentation identified all three states as priority E&S markets, noting prior underwriting experience in South Carolina and Texas across apartments, assisted living facilities, and commercial property. South Carolina’s coastal exposure has pushed a growing share of commercial property risks into the non-admitted channel in recent years.
The market ACES is entering
ACES arrives at a moment when Florida’s commercial E&S property market is softening. Florida’s E&S commercial property premium fell 5.6% in the first half of 2026 while policy volume rose 14.4%, a split that reflects greater capacity and softening market conditions, according to the Florida Surplus Lines Service Office. More capacity is entering the market, not less, which puts pressure on pricing discipline from the start.
ACIC’s most recent results, reported in August for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026, confirm the pressure. Gross premiums written fell 5.3% year over year to $216.3 million, with net pricing down approximately 24% year over year as the market pulls back from what management described as a generational peak. The company posted net income of $21.9 million for the quarter and maintained its full-year earnings guidance of $85 million to $100 million, citing disciplined underwriting over premium growth - a stance ACES will need to sustain as it enters a Florida E&S market where admitted and surplus lines carriers are actively competing for the same commercial risks.
AmCoast has posted an unbroken underwriting profit in Florida’s coastal property segment every year since 2007. ACES carries no loss history of its own, and the rate environment it is entering - softer pricing, more capacity, and compressed margins - did not exist when that record was built
