TALHASSEE – In an extraordinary criticism of one state agency, Florida’s Department of Insurance Regulation told Congress that the department led by then-treasury officer Jimmy Patronis could have filled thousands of complaints Floridians made against property insurance companies.
Patronis’ office referred 5.2% of property insurance complaints received over five years to regulators about possible violations of state law, indicating “potential underreports” written in a newly revealed memo obtained by the Times/Herald.
The low referral rate made it difficult for regulators to police the industry, the memo said. Consumers filed more than 52,000 complaints against real estate insurers over the period.
The memo given to legislative leaders was created as part of a tug of war between the two agencies, resulting in a bid to integrate insurance surveillance under one roof. Florida is the only state that divides insurance regulations between the two agencies.
The push for integration began before this year’s legislative meeting, after Patronis announced he would leave to run for Congress. He won a special election to the Panhandle seat on Tuesday after serving as CFO for seven years.
“This fork hampers the state’s ability to properly protect consumers,” says one of the memos.
The memo questioned the training of Patronis employees, saying his office missed complaints against the pharmacy benefits manager, claiming that the merger could help the state improve the use of police insurers’ affiliate companies.
House and Senate leaders have not approved the idea of integrating insurance oversight, and are not in the law introduced in this session. A spokesman for House Speaker Daniel Perez (R-Miami) and R-Wauchula’s Ben Albritton said they were open to the idea.
On one side there is an insurance regulatory bureau. It processes insurance companies’ fees, bails their actions and determines when the company is being paid. It is led by state insurance commissioner Mike Yaworski.
On the other side is the Ministry of Financial Services. Oversees consumer insurance complaints, regulates insurance agents, and takes over insolvency insurance companies. It is usually led by an elected chief financial officer, but the position is currently vacant.
The split dated in 2003 and has since ranked insurance committee members.
Yaworsky for One is open to reform. He said he wanted to “fastly defend consumers when they approach their state due to insurance issues.”
“If there is any discussion about this, we hope that it will lead to a very robust framework for ensuring that consumers are protected, whatever the outcome,” Yaworsky told The Times/Herald.
Yaworsky wrote in a note the drawbacks of splitting regulations, saying his office can see what the insurance company is doing, but he often doesn’t hear about consumer complaints.
“It hinders the state’s ability to assess and regulate the overall insurance market,” Memo states.
Yaworsky has stepped up industry enforcement since Desantis was appointed to him for work in 2023. He ordered insurance companies to stop demanding rate increases to avoid hearings, stopped hiring executives from failing companies, and called for more enforcement from lawmakers.
Yaworsky’s memo questioned the quality of complaints his office had been sent by the Ministry of Financial Services.
The department is supposed to send complaints if the company is likely to violate state law. But of the complaints received by Yaworsky’s office, almost half of the violations did not name the violation, the memo said.
Such a low rate was a “potential indicator” that staff at Patronis’ offices were “not properly trained to identify violations.”
“The problem is getting even more serious,” the memo says it is seeing complaints about pharmacy benefits managers and medical intermediaries blamed for the surge in drug prices.
In 2024, the pharmacist filed 142 complaints with Patronis’s department about the pharmacy benefits manager. The department closed 34 and referred 11 to the Insurance Regulation Authority. It’s not clear what happened in the rest of the matter. Meanwhile, the memo argued that the department did not capture the complaints made by patients because the department did not code properly.
By integrating regulations, the office also allows the insurance department to have more supervision of insurance affiliate companies. A 2022 analysis created by the office and revealed last month by Times/Herald found that their affiliates had won billions while insurers claimed they would lose money between 2017 and 2019.
The Ministry of Financial Services said Times/Herald did not answer questions about the memo.
One reason why there are so few complaints being forwarded to the Insurance Regulation Authority is that if Patronis’ department sues the insurance company, it has not investigated the complaints. That fact is not mentioned in the office notes.
Patronis historically took a light touch to the insurance industry.
He didn’t come out last year in favor of Yaworsky, which fined $1 million insurers for Hurricane Ian violations. Patronis has also pushed to seal records that shed light on why insurance companies are going out of business.
His office was to investigate claims by insurance adjusters who said the company they worked for had manipulated the estimates with lowball homeowners. However, Patronis’s office never raised accusations against the business and did not release records of his office’s investigation.
Two Republican senators fighting for Patronis said they saw the memo but had different conclusions.
Sen. Blaise Ingoglia of R-Spring Hill calls the lack of information sharing “very concerned.”
“By withholding some of that information, we’re not doing what we’re probably supposed to be doing,” he said. “It’s harmful to those who are filing these complaints.”
Ingoglia said she doesn’t know enough to say whether insurance regulations should be integrated.
Sen. Joe Gruters of R-Sarasota said he spoke to Patronis about the idea that “I thought it was really wrong in many ways.”
He said splitting regulations would monitor “checks and balances.”
He said the Insurance and Regulations are making a “power move” by trying to take control. He said the office already has access to state complaint data. (Yaworsky said the data is “problemous” and makes it “hard” for his office to find violations of the law.)
If anything, insurance regulations should only be elected chief financial officers, so “they can be accountable,” Gruters said.
