To Carriers’ Relief: New Florida Rule Won’t Count Mediation Requests as Complaints

June 17, 2026 by William Rabb

At long last, Florida property insurers may be thinking, state regulators have revised a consumer complaint tabulation methodology that many had criticized as skewed, unrealistic and out of line with most other states.

Under Rule 69O-138.003, published last week, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation will no longer consider requests for claims-dispute mediation as official complaints. And only those complaints made by named insureds will be counted when tabulating a carrier’s complaint index—a metric that can trigger market conduct examinations of carriers.

In the official language of rulemaking, the OIR will prioritize scheduling and conducting market conduct examinations of insurers based on several factors, the rule reads. These include “a disproportionate number of claims-handling complaints.”

An insurer is considered to have a disproportionate number when its complaint index is elevated in three of the last four quarters. The index, in turn, is determined by comparing the number of claims-handling complaints to the number of open claims.

But now, for the first time, “a request made by a named insured, a named beneficiary, a representative of the insured or named beneficiary, or an insurer to participate in any form of alternate dispute resolution process shall not be included when calculating the complaint index,” rule reads. Requests for service or alternative dispute resolution are made to the state Department of Financial Services.

The rule change “makes sense because it ensures that the Office’s required market conduct exams are based off of consumer complaints made to the FLOIR—and not based on service requests to DFS,” said Melissa Burt DeVriese, president of Security First Insurance, based in Ormond Beach.

The change will put the methodology in line with the intent of the governing statute, which emphasizes actual complaints from policyholders, DeVriese said.

Few, if any, other states consider requests for mediation or arbitration to be the same thing as consumer complaints about carriers’ conduct, Universal Property & Casualty Insurance attorney Travis Miller said last year.

“This has the effect of creating unwarranted perceptions of the Florida market, which we unfortunately must explain from time to time to other states or organizations,” Miller said.

An examination of complaint numbers, provided by the Department of Financial Services, showed that from 2020 to 2024, in the depths of the Florida property insurance crisis, consumer complaints about insurance companies more than doubled, to about 23,400.

But if requests for alternative dispute resolutions are left out of the count, the total number of complaints was much smaller: about 4,000 in 2020, rising only slightly by 2024.

In both measures, some of the largest carriers in the state recorded the most complaints. Without mediation requests included, Universal had 546 complaints in 2024; Citizens Property Insurance saw 599; State Farm Florida Insurance recorded 194 in 2024, almost double the number from four years earlier; Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance fielded 99 complaints in 2024, down from 148 in 2020.

Security First Insurance had 102 complaints in 2024, a third of the firm’s total from 2020. DeVriese said that trend may be due to the carrier’s renewed focus on improving customer service, as well as processes and procedures, for the past five years. Security First’s Google reviews, for example, also have improved, from 1.8 to 4.5 stars (out of 5), she noted.

Universal and Heritage representatives could not be reached for comment on the rule changes. The rule can be seen here. A hearing on the changes will be scheduled if anyone requests one by the end of July, but OIR is not anticipating a hearing, former Deputy Insurance Commissioner Lisa Miller noted in a newsletter this week.

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