Florida Touts Competitive Workers’ Comp Market Helped by 2003 Tort Reforms

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation says that the state’s workers’ compensation insurance market is competitive.

In a new report based on data from 2008, the OIR found the Florida market features 251 entities writing workers’ compensation – 246 private insurers, four self-insurance funds, and the Florida Workers’ Compensation Joint Underwriting Association (FWCJUA). The residual market, the FWCJUA, had 826 policies as of November 2009 with corresponding premiums of $5.7 million, a fraction of the state’s overall workers’ compensation premium, which reported a total of $2.3 billion in written premium in 2008, ranking Florida fifth nationally.

Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty credited reforms passed in 2003 along with the restoration of a cap on attorneys’ fees for declines in rates and stability in the marketplace.

In October, McCarty issued a final order approving the National Council on Compensation Insurance’s (NCCI) amended rate filing for rates to become effective Jan. 1. The 6.8 percent rate decrease marked the seventh annual consecutive drop in workers’ compensation rates – a cumulative 63.2 percent decline since the Florida Legislature passed reforms in 2003.