Editorial: Badmouthing Farmers is not a fix for Florida's property insurance crisis

Editorials from The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board are the opinions of the Board, not of the Post newsroom.

Florida's property insurance crisis continues unabated, and we're not sure what's worse: insurers — Farmers Insurance being only the latest — pulling up stakes and hightailing it out of the Sunshine State, or our state leaders' pitiful response to their departures. Both, unfortunately, have become routine to the detriment of frustrated policyholders.

Take the initial response of Jimmy Patronis, Florida's chief financial officer and the one high-level public official charged with overseeing the property insurance industry. He went full bellicose in a tweet, which we're sure made the executives at Farmers think twice about their decision to stop writing new or renewing existing policies in Florida. Not.

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"Hearing rumors @WeAreFarmers might pull out of Florida," Patronis tweeted on Monday. "If that's true my office is going to explore every avenue possible for holding them accountable. Don't get to leave after taking policyholder money."

Patronis didn't stop there. The next day he sent out a diatribe of a press release, accusing Farmers of "... playing politics" and not "... running a successful company." "Farmers Insurance is well on its way to becoming the Bud Light of insurance," he wrote. The CFO concluded with a platitude about consumers having "a seat at the table" and an olive branch: "While the communications by the insurance carrier has been garbage, there's still time to change course."

Don't hold your breath. The insurer's decision to drop auto, home and umbrella policies in Florida was a business decision, something Patronis, as a partner in a Panama City seafood restaurant, should understand. The move affects an estimated 100,000 policies, roughly 30% of the insurer's Florida business. Policies under other Farmers' brand names aren't affected. Still, the news that a major carrier is leaving Florida citing "risk exposure" is not good news.

Our View: Editorial: We asked the experts when property insurance bills will drop. The answer's bad.

What Florida's policyholders are left with are dropped coverage, ever increasing premiums and tough talk from a CFO that simply amounts to empty threats. Patronis is in his second — and final — term as the state's insurance watchdog. During his tenure, his bark has proven to be far worse than his bite as holding insurers accountable to benefit consumers' pockets hasn't made it to the top of his priority list.

In fact, Patronis, like other members of the Florida Cabinet, have raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the industries they are supposed to oversee. According to a Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald analysis, insurance companies, executives and agents have donated at least $74 million to Florida politicians and business groups, with Patronis, pulling in nearly $2 million.

For policyholders, however, the crisis is only getting worse. Citizens Property Insurance Corp., Florida's insurer of last resort, is fast becoming a first option and is expected to grow to 1.7 million policies by year-end. For those still fortunate enough to get insurance from the private market, the price is going up — a lot. The cost in Florida is expected to jump by at least 40 percent this year, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

More: As premiums continue to skyrocket, Florida residents ask: Do I need home insurance?

State lawmakers have tried to address the problem with two special sessions and the recent regular session. But they largely approved industry priorities of fighting lawsuits and funding for reinsurance, the source that insurers rely on to underwrite coverage for consumers. State leaders, along with the industry, have called for patience, but that's in increasingly short supply as desperate homeowners watch their premiums double seemingly overnight.

Policyholders need relief now. If nothing else, we deserve far more than the bluster coming from our CFO.

If Patronis really wants to reassure the people he's supposed to represent, consumers, the people worried about their insurance coverage, he had better find ways to better engage with insurers instead of hectoring them. Lawmakers gave him some consumer resources in SPB 7052, a bill the Florida Senate designed to give the CFO more resources to hold bad actors in the insurance industry accountable. If the legislation is more than lipstick on a pig, then Patronis and his team had better start using it to boost consumer confidence.

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We've said it before and it bears repeating: If there were ever a time when Florida needed a competent, engaged and more independent CFO, now is that time. Patronis, though, has been too easily distracted by the political priorities of others, most notably Gov. Ron DeSantis. Bluster and name-calling simply won't cut it. Smarter, tougher engagement with the industry by Patronis will beat out a Bud Light putdown any day of the week.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Rants no substitute for policies in fixing Florida property insurance mess