Florida Insurers Weakened By Excessive Payouts To Affiliates, CEOs

In 2015, State Farm’s CEO earned $13.3 million overseeing America’s largest property insurance company.

That same year at Tampa-based Heritage Insurance Holdings, one of numerous small Florida-based homeowners insurance companies, its CEO made $27.3 million -- despite overseeing 0.3% of the number of policies and accounts of State Farm.

Florida-based insurance companies have been going out of business the last few years or raising rates by double-digits.

Industry groups and Gov. Ron DeSantis have blamed excessive litigation, and Republican legislators are poised this week to limit the incentives to sue insurers.

But state lawmakers have largely ignored an issue that has been directly blamed for numerous past company failures -- and allowed some executives to make eye-popping sums of money over the last decade, when companies were wildly profitable thanks to years without a storm.