Florida Agents Appointed With Citizens Drops as Carrier Competition Grows

In another indicator of Florida moving back to a mostly market-based property insurance system, the number of insurance agents and agencies appointed with Citizens Property Insurance has dropped in the last year.

“It’s a sign of the healthy marketplace: The requests for new agents to be appointed with Citizens has continued to decrease,” Dave Newell, chairman of Citizens’ Market Accountability Advisory Committee, said at last week’s Citizens Board of Governors’ meeting. “There’s less reliance on Citizens, which is good for the market.”

Citizens’ data show that the number of appointed agents and agents has fluctuated through the years. In December 2022, the number of agencies was about 5,786. That number rose to just above 6,000 by October of 2023, but has since dropped and stood at 5,481 in July of this year. That’s a decrease of 215 in seven months.

The number of appointed agents rose 10% from late 2022 to 2023, and continued rising to more than 13,800 by December 2025, perhaps a reflection that 2022 legislative reforms—aimed at reducing litigation costs and premiums—had not fully taken effect across the state. Since then, though, the number of agents has fallen 3%, to 13,403 in July of this year, the Citizens data show.

And, tellingly, the numbers of policies written by most Citizens agencies has declined sharply. In late 2022, near the worst of the property insurance litigation crisis, hundreds of agencies were handling more than 500 policies each, many with as many as 2,000 policies.

As of October 2023, less than half of Citizens-appointed agencies handled fewer than 50 Citizens policies each. Today, handling fewer Citizens policies seems to be the norm as policies have been moved to primary market carriers: As of July of this year, 79% of Citizens agencies had fewer than 50 Citizens policies. Only 11 agencies handled more than 2,000 Citizens policyholders each.

Several Florida insurance agents have said that the market is becoming healthier and more competitive. That makes it easier to avoid writing policies with Citizens, which generally pays a smaller commission than most private carriers offer. But with so many new carriers in the state, shopping around is keeping agents as busy as ever, one agent said.

Overall, Citizens’ total policy count has dropped sharply, from 1.4 million in 2023 to less than 260,000 this month, as new private carriers have entered the state, many of which have made takeout offers to Citizens policyholders, officials said.

The decline in Citizens policies in force does not seem to be reflected in customer service representatives at agencies. The number of Citizens-appointed licensed customer representatives fell only slightly from December 2025 to this summer, Citizens data show. And that’s still higher than the 2,800 seen in late 2022.

Tallied performance violations for agents dropped from a high of 613,559 in 2022 to almost half that number in 2024, the last year for which complete data was available. The most-cited violation was agents attempting to write uninsurable risks, the Citizens documents show.

Topics Carriers Florida Agencies