Florida’s top five auto insurance groups — Progressive, GEICO, State Farm, Allstate, and USAA — hold about 81 percent of the Florida auto market combined. The state says their indicated rate change for 2026 is a combined negative 12.6 percent. Commissioner Yaworsky said nearly 80 percent of Florida auto policyholders will see lower rates this year.

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Florida: After Years of Painful Rate Hikes, USAA Is Cutting Auto Insurance Premiums for Nearly Half a Million Floridians

For years, Florida drivers watched their auto insurance bills climb with no clear end in sight. Now the direction has reversed — and one of the state’s most trusted insurers just made a significant move.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky has approved auto insurance rate decreases for more than 498,000 USAA Group policies in Florida. The average reduction is 7 percent, with individual changes ranging from 0.4 percent to 11.2 percent depending on the program. Yaworsky said: “USAA is always stepping up to the plate and looking out for their consumers.”

For Florida’s 1.4 million veterans and its active-duty military community, the cut is especially meaningful. USAA serves active-duty service members, veterans, and their families almost exclusively. Randy Termeer, USAA P&C president, said: “Every dollar counts for our active-duty service members, veterans and their families.”

Who Gets the Biggest Cuts

The reductions are not uniform across the state. USAA’s largest Florida concentrations are in military-heavy counties, and those are seeing the steepest cuts.

Brevard County — home to Patrick Space Force Base — is seeing an average 5.8 percent decrease. Escambia County, where Naval Air Station Pensacola is located, is averaging 8 percent. Okaloosa County, home to Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field, is averaging 8.4 percent — the largest of the three.

These are the counties where USAA does the most business in Florida, and where military families are most concentrated.

This Is Part of a Larger Shift

The USAA announcement is not an isolated event. It is part of a broader rollback of Florida auto insurance rates that has been building since 2024.

Florida’s top five auto insurance groups — Progressive, GEICO, State Farm, Allstate, and USAA — hold about 81 percent of the Florida auto market combined. The state says their indicated rate change for 2026 is a combined negative 12.6 percent. Commissioner Yaworsky said nearly 80 percent of Florida auto policyholders will see lower rates this year.

In the past twelve months, 42 companies filed for personal auto rate decreases in Florida — 32 of them in just the last six months.

What Changed — and Why

Florida’s auto insurance market was in serious trouble just three years ago. In 2023, the state’s top five insurers posted an average rate increase of 31.7 percent as litigation costs spiraled. Florida ranked second only to Louisiana as the most expensive state for auto insurance in the country.

The turning point was Florida House Bill 837, signed in March 2023. The law cut the statute of limitations on negligence claims from four years to two, moved Florida to modified comparative negligence, and ended one-way attorney fee awards in most auto cases. The change reduced the financial incentive to file and litigate minor accident claims.

The results showed up fast in the loss data. Florida’s auto physical damage loss ratio — a key measure of claim costs versus premiums — fell from 112 percent in 2022 to 66.7 percent in 2024. Florida’s personal auto liability loss ratio hit 53.3 percent in 2024, its lowest in 15 years and the lowest of any state in the nation, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.

Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia credited the reforms, saying the rate decreases would help Florida families “keep more of their hard-earned money in their pockets.”

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Read full article on LiveInsuranceNews.com

 

TCJL Editor’s Note: While this is excellent news for the Florida market, it is not relevant to Texas.  TCJL passed comparative negligence in 1987, Texas already has a 2 year statute of limitations, and Texas law does not provide attorney fees either way in these types of cases.


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