Six years after it launched and two years after it exited the distressed Florida market, American Mobile Insurance Exchange has officially lost its authority to operate.
Florida Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky announced Monday, Oct. 19, that he had forced the St. Petersburg, Florida-based company to surrender its certificate of authority, bringing some closure to a turbulent period for the exchange, for property owners and for Florida insurance agents looking to place mobile home policies.
“Evasive companies that cancel all their policies and want to re-domesticate are not committed to Floridians and have no place in our state,” Yaworsky said in a statement.
The final nail came after the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation placed the mobile-home-focused reciprocal under temporary supervision in 2024—then extended the supervision period at least six times.
It all began in 2020, when American Mobile was launched by K2 Insurance Services and Jeff LeGare, who later went on to be CEO of Dallas-based Homebound Risk Managers. The Florida-only American Mobile exchange brought some much-needed coverage to the mobile home market in Florida. The Sunshine State had been socked by hurricanes and by claims litigation that was driving up premiums and which later prompted a number of property insurers to go out of business or exit the state.
American Mobile “will offer affordable insurance solutions to a market that historically has been underserved,” LeGare told Insurance Journal shortly after the firm opened for business, in early 2021.
Within two years, American Mobile seemed to be a success. It held more than 7,200 policies in the state with an average annual premium of $1,326 in early 2023.
But things soon began to fall apart, thanks in large part to a distressed Florida market where reinsurance prices spiked, especially for mobile-home insurers, according to OIR orders and interviews with agents, regulatory staff and carrier executives. And Hurricane Ian, which damaged or destroyed mobile homes all along Florida’s southwest coast in 2022, didn’t help.
In November 2023, the company, without complete reinsurance coverage, asked regulators to allow it to pay $1 million in interest on a surplus note. But OIR examiners said that would leave American Mobile’s surplus dangerously impaired. The company then threatened to leave Florida and become domiciled in another state. But other states’ regulators declined to allow the firm to re-domesticate, Yaworsky explained.
The insurer also began canceling hundreds of policies just before the start of hurricane season that year.
About the same time, American Mobile’s policyholder surplus slid to about $15 million—barely above the minimum required by Florida regulations, an April 2024 OIR consent order noted. From 2021 to 2023, the company saw a net loss of $15 million, more than half of that in one year.
By April of 2024, Florida OIR had seen enough and placed the exchange under administrative supervision.
“American Mobile will be unlikely to procure adequate reinsurance for the 2024 hurricane season, its policyholder surplus projects to be impaired, and its financial strength rating is at risk of being downgraded or withdrawn,” OIR’s consent order reads.
The Demotech financial rating firm withdrew its previously rosy “A” rating that same month. Some 8,000 policies were transferred to other carriers, including American Traditions Insurance, which now holds a total of 67,000 mobile home policies in Florida.
Despite the runoff and transfers to other companies, the exit of American Mobile left insureds and agents scrambling to find affordable coverage for some of the most vulnerable properties, just as hurricane season winds began to blow.
“One of our niches has been manufactured homes and mobile homes. But now the market has absolutely fallen apart in Florida,” John Gardner, of Fort Myers, principal at Lee County Insurance agency, said in July 2024.
By early this year, prices were still out of reach for many mobile homeowners. Premiums on some older trailers were higher than the premiums on new mobile homes, and more than premiums on non-mobile single family homes, Gardner said.
But by this summer, mobile home rates appeared to have moderated somewhat, as property insurance rates across the board have stabilized after legislative changes that deterred claims litigation costs for carriers, and after reinsurance rates relaxed. The average annual mobile home premium for American Traditions was $1,666 in Q2 2026, according to OIR quarterly data reports. That was just $20 higher than in Q1.
Yaworsky’s order this week was not unexpected, but it helps close the chapter on American Mobile Insurance Exchange and the recent troubles in the Florida mobile home market.
“Forcing the surrender of the COA ensured that an evasive insurer was formally stripped of its authority to operate in Florida and that any lingering liabilities or obligations would continue to be strictly governed under Florida law,” OIR Press Secretary Shiloh Elliott said in an email.
Officials with American Mobile, including LeGare, could not be reached for comment Monday. The exchange may no longer be in business in Florida, but it has been reincarnated and was, in fact, re-domesticated, in a sense, as Homebound Insurance Exchange, in Texas.
Top photo: A mobile home in Florida, hit hard by Hurricane Ian in 2022. (DepositPhotos)
Topics Florida
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