I do not know that Florida’s insurance companies “control” the Florida Senate. That is a serious accusation requiring evidence beyond campaign contributions, lobbying reports, and legislation that dies without a vote. But sometimes enough facts line up that asking hard questions becomes not only fair, but necessary. Florida has reached that point with the secrecy surrounding payments between property insurers and their affiliated companies.
The Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun-Sentinel recently obtained the unredacted version of a study commissioned by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation examining those affiliate transactions. According to the newspapers, the Florida Senate inadvertently produced the documents in response to a public records request. After discovering the mistake, Senate lawyers demanded that the newspapers stop using the material, destroy the documents, and warn others who received them to do the same. 1
The newspapers refused. This is an extraordinary public-records story by itself. Three other facts make the situation far more troubling.
The Report Raised Questions About Where Premium Dollars Went
The OIR-commissioned study examined payments between Florida property insurers and companies affiliated with them. According to the Sentinel reporting, the consultant concluded that 20 insurers had affiliate payments exceeding its benchmark for what was “fair and reasonable.”
Heritage Property & Casualty was among the companies identified. According to the reporting, Heritage reported almost $81 million in losses during the 2017–2019 period while its affiliates generated approximately $174 million in net income.
Those numbers do not prove illegality. Affiliate arrangements are legal, the data are several years old, and Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky has criticized the consultant’s work as incomplete and containing errors and data-validation problems. Those qualifications deserve to be stated. What is harder to understand is that OIR says there are problems with the report while maintaining that the information necessary for the public to evaluate those criticisms remains confidential.
If the study is wrong, Floridians should be told precisely how it is wrong. If it identified legitimate regulatory concerns, Floridians should know what OIR did about them. Secrecy prevents either conclusion from being independently evaluated.
The Florida House Voted 106–3 for Greater Scrutiny
The second fact is even harder to ignore. During the 2026 legislative session, the Florida House considered HB 1399, the Property Insurance Affiliates bill. It would have required insurers to document that payments to affiliates were fair and reasonable, required additional audited financial information, increased OIR oversight, established affiliate registration requirements, and authorized regulatory action involving improper transfers of insurer funds.
This was not a partisan bill squeaking through on a narrow vote. The Florida House passed it 106–3. Then it went to the Florida Senate, was referred to the Rules Committee, and died without receiving a Senate floor vote.
The Senate had another opportunity. SB 234 addressed insurer financial transactions and would have required additional affiliate disclosures and reviews while imposing restrictions on certain transactions. It never received a committee vote. It died in the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee.
So, the House overwhelmingly concluded that additional scrutiny was warranted. The Senate never allowed either approach to reach its floor. There has been no explanation on why the Senate killed these bills that would have allowed greater transparency.
Follow the Money but Do Not Pretend It Proves More Than It Does
The third fact concerns political influence. Campaign contributions are legal. Lobbying is legal. Insurance companies have every right to advocate for their interests before the Florida Legislature. Contributions and lobbying expenditures, standing alone, do not prove corruption or a quid pro quo. But disclosure exists so the public can examine relationships between money, access, and government decisions.
Heritage is particularly noteworthy because it is both an insurer identified in the newspaper reporting about affiliate transactions and a substantial political participant in Florida. The Miami Herald has reported that Heritage and its parent company have contributed at least $2.3 million to Florida politicians and political committees since the company’s founding era. Heritage has also spent heavily on lobbying. Florida Politics reported that Heritage paid Greenberg Traurig an estimated $180,000 for legislative lobbying in 2022, and Heritage continued to rank among the firm’s largest insurance clients in 2025.
The broader insurance industry is hardly absent from Florida politics. The Florida Insurance Council’s political committee reports $50,000 in expenditures to the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee and $25,000 to Senate President Ben Albritton, among numerous other political expenditures.
None of this proves that Heritage asked anybody to kill HB 1399. I have not found evidence establishing that. Nor does an insurance-industry contribution prove that a senator acted because of it.
Those distinctions matter. But so do the facts themselves.
A state-commissioned study raises concerns about insurer-affiliate transactions. Heritage is reportedly among the companies identified. Heritage spends substantial amounts on lobbying and political activity. The insurance industry spends heavily throughout Tallahassee. The Florida House passes sweeping affiliate-transparency legislation 106–3. The Senate lets it die. A similar Senate bill never receives its first committee vote. Then, when the Senate inadvertently releases the underlying material, its lawyers demand that newspapers destroy it.
Nobody needs me to manufacture outrage from those facts. They raise plenty of questions on their own.
The Greater Danger Is Losing Faith in the System
The greater danger is that ordinary Floridians look at this series of events and conclude that the insurance system is rigged. Florida homeowners have endured enormous premium increases, shrinking coverage, larger deductibles, roof-payment schedules, water limitations, reduced litigation remedies, and repeated legislative reforms promoted as necessary to stabilize the market. Meanwhile, they now learn that regulators possessed a study raising questions about money flowing from insurers to affiliates, much of the underlying information remained secret, transparency legislation overwhelmingly passed the House but died in the Senate, and the Senate is trying to claw back information accidentally disclosed to newspapers.
Whether that perception of a rigged system is ultimately fair is almost beside the point. Florida’s political leaders are helping create the conditions that produce it. Public confidence cannot be legislated into existence. It is earned through transparency, accountability, and explanations that withstand scrutiny. Threatening journalists with criminal charges for exposing embarrassing information about insurance company insiders making millions while related regulated insurers are reporting losses is not good optics.
The Senate may have perfectly legitimate reasons for protecting particular trade secrets. Senators may also have perfectly legitimate explanations for why HB 1399 and SB 234 did not advance. Then publicly tell us.
Explain why the information should remain secret. Explain why the House was wrong by a vote of 106–3. Explain why Floridians should be satisfied with the existing oversight of affiliate transactions.
Silence and secrecy leave citizens to fill in the blanks themselves. It is particularly dangerous in an insurance system already suffering from a profound lack of public trust.
The question is therefore not whether insurance companies are entitled to lobby or participate in politics. Of course they are. The question is whether Florida’s political institutions are protecting the public interest with the same determination that they are protecting insurer financial information.
For those interested in Florida’s unique method of insurance regulation, I suggest reading Florida’s Divided Insurance Regulation Is Under Fire — and for Good Reason.
Skyler Swisher, Ron Hurtibise, and David Fleshler deserve a big shout for their excellent joint investigative journalism into the Florida property insurance market for the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Thought For The Day
“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy.”
—James Madison, letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822
1 Skyler Swisher, Ron Hurtibise, David Fleshler. “How Florida fights to hide insurers’ finances.” Orlando Sentinel / South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sept. 19, 2026). Available online with paywall at https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/09/19/how-florida-fights-to-hide-insurers-finances/
