By Hans Kennon
I was back recently from a trip and right back into hearings, cases, and helping people. At the same time, we had the Windstorm Conference in Orlando, where public adjusters, attorneys, and others in the property insurance world usually come together for continuing education and case updates.
But this year made something clear: the turnout is not what it used to be.
Years ago, Windstorm was a juggernaut. Thousands of people went. You had to fight to get into classes. You planned your whole week around the schedule so you didn’t miss the important case law updates and industry discussions.
Now, after the law changes in Florida, a lot of that energy is gone. And it is not just on one side. Defense firms do not have the same work either. Everybody sees what happened.
The reason is simple: Florida has made it harder and harder for anyone to help the policyholder.
Public adjusters and attorneys are being pushed out
Jack Hanks of VPA joined us and said something important. His company works in 44 states. He sees what is happening not just in Florida, but across the country.
Public adjusters exist for one reason: to help homeowners and property owners get treated fairly under their policy and get what they are supposed to get. That is all.
But every year, that job gets harder.
Florida keeps tightening the screws. We keep watching the legislative session to see what is moving, and every year there is another bill, another restriction, another attempt to weaken representation for consumers.
At one point, there was even talk of a bill saying that if someone is over 65, they could cancel their contract with a public adjuster anytime with no penalty. So now what, are public adjusters supposed to ask people their age before helping them?
That is how absurd this has become.
And it is not just Florida. Similar attacks are happening in Kentucky, Georgia, Utah, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. State by state, public adjusters are being painted as the bad guys.
But why?
Why restrict the one person trying to help the insured?
Insurance policies are now starting to include anti-public-adjuster endorsements and exclusions. Think about how upside down that is.
A property owner buys a policy, maybe gets a slight discount, and does not realize that if they ever need help on a claim, their policy may exclude the use of a public adjuster altogether.
That means when a claim goes bad, they cannot bring in someone whose job is to help them.
And what is the alternative?
In many cases, instead of paying a public adjuster a percentage, the consumer ends up needing an attorney later and paying far more. Every claim does not need a lawyer. Every claim does not need a public adjuster. But taking the option away from the consumer only hurts the consumer.
It is not good for the industry. It is not good for the policyholder. And frankly, it is not even good for the insurance companies in the long run, because it pushes more disputes straight into litigation.
The system wants homeowners to go bare
What I see is this: they are making it where public adjusters cannot work, and lawyers cannot get paid.
They are taking away help on the ground first, then making it harder for lawyers to take the case later.
There are many claims today that are real, valid claims, but economically you cannot afford to take them any further. That is the point. The system is being designed so the homeowner is left effectively bare.
And most consumers do not even realize how much help has been taken off the table until they have a serious loss.
Delay, deny, defend is not a slogan. It is the business model.
This is real. It is not theory.
Consumers are buying policies with more exclusions, more limitations, more endorsements, and more traps. Some policies now exclude public adjusters. Some restrict experts unless pre-approved. Some cap what you can recover if you use your own contractor. Some contain roof surface schedules that cut value based on age.
Meanwhile, insurers still get to use experts whenever they want, for whatever they want, to short-pay, deny, or slow-walk a claim.
That is why the phrase delay, deny, defend resonates. It is not just a phrase. It is how the system works.
Insurers were crying crisis while funneling billions to affiliates
Here is where it gets worse.
The Legislature was told for years that insurers were losing money because of frivolous claims, public adjusters, contractors, and lawsuits. That was the justification for gutting consumer protections and taking away attorney’s fees.
But then the public learned that insurers had been funneling billions of dollars to affiliated companies while claiming their insurance divisions were losing money.
A study by the Office of Insurance Regulation reportedly sat withheld from legislators for three years. The study found that insurers avoided a 4.5% state profit cap by moving billions to affiliates and portraying those transfers as fees.
So while they claimed the insurance side was losing money from 2017 through 2019, those numbers were being used to justify policies and laws aimed at putting public adjusters, contractors, and attorneys out of business.
That matters.
Because it means the “crisis” story used to change the law was not being told honestly.
Premiums were raised, coverage was reduced, and now we are told relief is “around the corner”
Now lawmakers are saying they do not want major changes because premium reductions are supposedly just around the corner.
But homeowners are already paying triple for less coverage.
That is the reality. Higher premiums. Worse policies. More exclusions. Fewer rights.
If the increases were unjustified, then why are we still acting like the answer is to wait and hope?
Why is the Legislature not using the very report it sat on to force rate reductions?
Why is the solution always more damage to the consumer and more restrictions on the people trying to help the consumer?
Less than 5% of claims ever involve a public adjuster or lawyer
This part is critical.
Jack pointed out that less than 5% of claims are represented by either a public adjuster or an attorney.
That means on 95% of claims, the insurer already controls the process from start to finish.
And they are still not satisfied.
So what do they want? Control over 99.9999% of claims.
That is what this fight is really about.
Florida is paying the price
Property values are dipping. Real estate is strained. People cannot afford to live here. Florida is supposed to be a place people retire to, not a place they go broke trying to insure a home.
And if carriers are underpaying or denying claims across the state, what do we think that does to the housing stock?
You will end up with patched-together houses all over the state. Damaged roofs. Half-repaired homes. Deferred maintenance everywhere because people never got paid properly on the claim.
Where are the mortgage companies? Where are the banks holding notes on these homes? They should be deeply concerned.
This did not happen by accident
A lot of this traces back to the special sessions pushed through under Governor DeSantis.
These measures were not moving the same way through the regular process. They had to be forced through special sessions. And what got passed was effectively a wish list from the insurance lobby.
Assignment of benefits rights got gutted. Contractor rights got attacked. Attorney’s fees were taken away. Homeowner rights were weakened.
And once those laws passed, other states started watching Florida as the model.
That is how bad policy spreads.
Consumers need to read more than just the exclusions page
The old advice was to read the exclusions in your policy.
That is no longer enough.
Now you need to read the exclusions, the limitations, the endorsements, the caps, the matching provisions, the roof surface schedules, and the fine print about who you can hire and what gets paid.
An HO3 policy used to mean something more substantial. In Florida, you were supposed to get ordinance and law and replacement cost value. Period.
Now there are policies reducing roof value based on age, even though that runs directly against what people think they bought.
How did these policies get approved?
That is a fair question.
The business owner often has no idea what they actually bought
One of the best points Jack made was this: most policyholders, even sophisticated business owners with multimillion-dollar properties, do not actually know what is in their policy.
They find out only after a loss.
Maybe they thought they had a standard deductible, but discover they have a wind deductible so high that they are effectively self-insuring the roof.
Maybe they thought glass was covered, but learn there is a separate deductible per pane.
Maybe they thought they had replacement coverage, but discover hidden limitations and endorsements that gut the claim.
That is why policy review before the loss matters so much.
The engineering games are real too
This problem does not stop with policy language.
We are also seeing continued abuse in the way engineering opinions are used. Carrier experts routinely come in and blame damage on wear and tear, foot traffic, installation defects, or anything but the actual storm.
And now there are efforts to make forensic engineering so burdensome on the policyholder side that legitimate expert opinions become nearly impossible to produce economically.
That is not about science. It is about control.
Judges already act as gatekeepers under Daubert. If an opinion is unsupported, it should not come in. That system already exists. So why keep trying to add more barriers at the licensing and regulatory level?
Because the goal is not clarity. The goal is to make claims harder to prove.
The whistleblowers are getting punished
We have even seen adjusters come forward and say their estimates were altered without their knowledge while their names remained on the reports.
That should have triggered serious investigation.
Instead, what happened? Lawsuits. Retaliation. Attempts to ruin people financially for telling the truth.
That tells you everything you need to know about how deep this problem runs.
A lot of claims only exist because someone knocked on the door
There is this effort to demonize contractors, public adjusters, and anyone else who goes out and finds damage.
But the truth is that many homeowners never get on their roof. They have no idea there is a valid claim until someone inspects it.
I had a mediation recently where even the insurance company agreed the damage was from Hurricane Milton. The only problem was timing. The homeowner came too late. If someone had knocked on that door earlier, it would have been a legitimate, payable claim.
So the narrative that door-knocking itself is somehow evil misses the point completely.
The claim either exists or it does not.
What homeowners and business owners need to do now
At this point, all we can do is keep bringing the information forward and tell people the truth.
Look at your policy now, not after a loss.
Read the endorsements.
Read the exclusions.
Read the limitations.
Check your deductibles.
Look for anti-public-adjuster endorsements.
Look for roof schedules.
Look for caps on matching or contractor choice.
Know whether you are actually insured or just carrying a very expensive fire policy.
Because that is what many of these policies are becoming.
And if you are a business owner, the odds are even higher that you are sitting on a surplus lines policy with serious restrictions you do not understand yet.
Final thought
The issue is not whether every claim needs a lawyer or a public adjuster.
The issue is whether consumers should be allowed to get help when they need it.
Right now, the system keeps moving in the opposite direction. More power to carriers. Less transparency. Fewer rights. Worse coverage. Higher premiums.
That is not reform.
That is abandonment.