The Florida Insurance Guaranty Association (FIGA) is asking its member insurers to hold off assessing Florida homeowners a surcharge amount upon policy renewal to cover the costs of two 2021 insurance company insolvencies in the state. The assessment amount of .7 percent was voted by the FIGA Board of Directors in August 2021 and insurers are asked to wait approximately two weeks until state regulators decide whether or not to vote for a surcharge on the approximately $168 million in claims from two 2021 insolvencies. There is also concern over two other financially unstable insurers in the state which may lead to further FIGA obligations should they fail.

This is the first time since 2012 that FIGA has had to raise the surcharge. Much of this is attributed to hurricanes and Florida's recent history of fraudulent assignment of claims and litigation costs surrounding them. Two insurance companies: American Capital Assurance Corporation (AmCap), and Gulfstream Property and Casualty Insurance Company have been liquidated in 2021. These two insolvencies came on the heels of a couple of large 2020 insolvencies for the association.

The FIGA statute allows insurers to recover the cost of guaranty association assessments directly from Florida policyholders by increasing their policy premiums until the cost of the assessments have been fully recovered. While the surcharge per policy is spread amongst all policyholders in the state, it does increase premiums in a state with already high homeowners premiums. The ability of member insurers to add this FIGA surcharge is in contrast to state guaranty funds such as Ohio that allow member insurers to take a premium tax offset for guaranty fund assessment biannually under its statute.