A Florida homeowners carrier just posted big growth

Slide Insurance Holdings reported second-quarter results on July 28. Gross premiums written rose 16.7% from a year earlier to $508 million, and net income climbed about 92% to $134.9 million. Slide is a Tampa-based carrier writing coastal homeowners business, so its numbers say something about the Florida market and not just one company's balance sheet.

A growing, profitable homeowners carrier in Florida is not a small thing. For most of the past decade the story ran the other way: carriers left the state, went insolvent, or stopped writing new business, and homeowners ended up in Citizens because nothing else was available. When carriers make money here, they write more policies, and competition is what actually brings quotes down. So stop treating your renewal as automatic. If your premium spiked during the hard market and you have not shopped it since, you are pricing against a market that has changed underneath you.

An independent agent can pull quotes from several carriers at once and tell you in a few minutes whether what you pay now is still competitive.