Florida’s insurance market is one of the most complex and closely watched in the country, shaped by a steady stream of legislative activity, agency rulemaking, and market pressures that require more than a passing familiarity with how the system works. Members of our firm have served in regulatory and policy roles involving Florida’s insurance market, providing clients with insight into the legislative, regulatory, and operational issues affecting the industry.
CCC represents clients before the Florida Legislature, Department of Financial Services, and Office of Insurance Regulation. The firm’s work spans property and casualty, life and health, workers’ compensation, managed care, pharmacy benefits, and specialty insurance products. CCC has been at the center of some of Florida’s most consequential insurance policy debates, including personal injury protection reform, workers’ compensation changes, balance billing legislation, insolvency law, and broader efforts to modernize Florida’s insurance regulatory framework.
In recent years, Florida’s insurance landscape has seen significant change, from property market instability and carrier insolvencies to legislative reforms aimed at stabilizing rates and reducing litigation. Navigating that environment requires relationships, institutional knowledge, and a clear understanding of how policy decisions affect the market. CCC brings all three.
- Modernized laws related to lender place/collateral protection insurance
Collateral protection insurance—also known as lender-placed insurance—is regulated at the state and federal levels. Importantly, this product provides property insurance coverage for those whose coverage may have lapsed, protecting both a homeowner’s investment, as well as a lender’s security interest. CCC led the effort to adopt a NAIC Model Law, which included restrictions on the sharing of commissions, the promotion of dual coverage policies, the implementation of a standard rate review process, and clarity around when coverage terminates after a homeowner regains primary coverage. These consumer protections improve accountability in this marketplace, while also increasing regulatory clarity for insurers offering this necessary product.
- Fixed Florida’s broken windshield laws
At its peak, first-party litigation over allegedly broken windshields reached over 60,000 lawsuits per year. Spurned by the attachment of one-way attorney’s fees to assignments of benefits, certain attorneys were filing thousands of these lawsuits per year. CCC led the development of a coalition, entitled Fix the Cracks, which provided key empirical, legislative, and public relations support to this successful effort. According to the Office of Insurance Regulation, this effort contributed to Florida’s auto physical damage ratio moving from 48th to 9th place in just one year, fostering dramatic savings for drivers.
- Prevented surplus lines overregulation
Nonadmitted policy forms are rates are necessarily customized to insure large, niche, or hard-to-place risks. In several legislative sessions, proposals have been advanced to regulate the use of arbitration, create mandatory venue requirements for dispute resolution, require substantially similar terms & conditions for certain renewals, and apply other features of admitted market regulation. CCC has worked to educate policymakers and thought leaders on the necessary flexibility for surplus lines and other unauthorized insurers, ensuring their stability and availability for Florida’s policyholders.