Questions Remain as Session Enters Final Weeks
As the 2025 legislative session enters its final two weeks, significant questions remain about the fate of key insurance bills. This year’s session has included substantial debate over bills opposed by Governor DeSantis, the Office of Insurance Regulation and the insurance industry. This attention, however, has not translated to action as relatively few bills have advanced through the committee process.
The House of Representatives’ subcommittee on insurance and banking debated and acted favorably on several bills that would undermine key property insurance reforms, heavily regulate insurers’ payments to affiliates to the point of limiting the ability of non-insurance affiliates’ to pay dividends, and repealing Florida’s no-fault auto insurance system. Governor DeSantis and the Office of Insurance Regulation have opposed efforts to repeal or limit Florida’s property insurance reforms. Commissioner Mike Yaworsky frequently pointed to the stabilization of homeowners’ insurance rates over the last two years, new entrants to the market and declining litigation as signs the reforms are working. While House committees advanced these unfavorable proposals to the industry, the Senate has taken a more measured approach. Few bills advanced out of the Senate Banking & Insurance committee, and those bills generally did not contain the same adversarial measures.
House and Senate committees will end their work this week. The remainder of the session will be devoted to considering bills before the full House or Senate. Inevitably, this turns the attention to bills that might be pulled out of the committee process or proposals that might be amended onto bills that are moving.
One remaining bill to watch is HB 947. At its last committee stop, this bill was amended to include a provision that would substantially limit the effectiveness of offers of judgment of insurers, reversing one of the components of the recent property insurance reforms. The bill also would restore a statutory right to attorneys’ fees under the guise of being a “prevailing party” fee provision but that clearly would return Florida to increased levels of litigation, claims costs and expenses, and rising premiums. Further, the bill would extend the statutory fee provision to wet marine and transportation insurance, title insurance, and credit life and disability insurance potentially driving the scope of litigation to unprecedented levels in lines that haven’t previously experienced the crisis of the property market.
In light of the vast disagreement between proponents and opponents of the reforms, it is possible that the 2025 session will conclude without any meaningful property insurance legislation passing. However, with passion running high on both sides of the debate, industry observers will be watching this until the session’s final day on May 2.