Insurance companies in Florida: 15,478 offices, the insurers based here and how to vet one

This is for anyone trying to make sense of Florida's insurers: homeowners and drivers comparing quotes or fighting a claim, people looking for work in the industry, and businesses that sell to carriers, agencies and adjusters. It covers how many there are and what kind, which ones are headquartered in the state, the two state agencies that license them, and how to sell to them. It doesn't recommend any carrier.

Two regulators, two kinds of company

Florida splits the job. The Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) licenses and supervises insurers: the carriers that write policies and pay claims. The Department of Financial Services (DFS) licenses the people and firms that sell and adjust (agents, agencies, adjusters) and runs the consumer helpline. So the first question about any "insurance company" is which kind it is.

County Business Patterns 2023 shows the split for Florida's 15,478 establishments:

Average pay is payroll divided by employees, our calculation. Carriers are 15.8% of establishments but employ 51.8% of the people, and Florida ranks second among the states for both carrier establishments and carrier employment. Its 10,837 agencies and brokerages rank third, behind California and Texas, and average 6.4 employees each.

What the market looks like

That is 14,314 establishments under 20 employees, 837 with 20 to 99 and 327 with 100 or more, an average of 15.1. Annual payroll was $20.2 billion. The small end is mostly agencies; the 1,059 claims adjusting establishments are even smaller, with 916 under five employees, which fits a state where adjusters scale up and down with storm seasons.

The OIR's market overview adds the home insurance picture. As it showed on 30 October 2026: 7.71 million residential policies in force; an average admitted-market homeowners premium of $3,736 including wind and $2,124 without; 1,883,487 policies approved in 2025 for takeout from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state-created insurer of last resort; and 21 additional property and casualty insurers approved to enter Florida after the legislature's reforms.

County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid staff, not companies, and leaves out agents who work alone without employees. A carrier's Tampa headquarters and its Orlando claims office are two establishments.

Insurers and brokers headquartered in Florida

Twelve SEC-registered listed companies in insurance have Florida business addresses. We checked each in its 10-K (or, for the newest, its prospectus):

Seven of the twelve are in Tampa or St. Petersburg. Revenue is total revenue as each company reported it; for the brokers it is mostly commissions, and Fidelity National Financial's includes its annuity and life business. Many large Florida carriers aren't listed companies, including Citizens. To see every insurer authorized in the state, use the OIR search below, which can filter by company type and line of business.

Checking a carrier, an agent or a claim

1. Is the insurer authorized? Search the OIR's Active Company Search by name or NAIC code. You can filter by company type (insurer, HMO, surplus lines, risk retention group and others) and authorized line, and export the results. Suspended companies don't appear, and companies in receivership are on a separate list. A risk retention group isn't an authorized insurer unless Florida is its home state, and state guaranty funds don't cover it.
2. Is the agent or adjuster licensed? The DFS Licensee Search covers agents, agencies, adjusters and adjusting firms, resident and nonresident, with license status.
3. What is its complaint record? The NAIC's Consumer Insurance Search reports complaints, licenses and financial information by company. Use the exact legal name from your policy.
4. Need help with a claim or policy? Contact the company first; DFS notes most issues resolve within 30 days. Then submit a request through the DFS Consumer Assistance Portal. DFS asks the company to explain itself, and by statute it has 14 days to respond; DFS then checks the answer against Florida law. It won't act as your adjuster or force a payment no law or policy term requires.

Jobs

Florida insurance paid an average of $86,676 in 2023, below the national averages for carriers ($107,137) and agencies ($90,831), by our calculation from County Business Patterns. Life insurers pay the most of the large segments, at $118,939. The 327 establishments with 100 or more employees, and the Tampa Bay cluster in particular, are where corporate underwriting, claims and IT jobs concentrate.

Selling to Florida carriers, agencies and adjusters

Each group buys differently. Residential property carriers buy inspection and roof data, catastrophe modeling, reinsurance analytics, claims staffing and policy systems; their underwriting, claims and IT leaders decide, and reinsurance renewals set the calendar. The 10,837 agencies buy agency management systems, quoting tools, marketing and lead generation, usually through the owner. Adjusting firms need staff, field software and training before storm season. For lists, DFS publishes bulk CSV downloads of valid business licenses and active business appointments, and the Florida Association of Insurance Agents runs an agency locator.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are invented.

Keyline Inspections (keyline-inspections.example) sells roof-condition re-inspections to residential property insurers. It starts with property and casualty carrier establishments with 20 to 249 employees: 63 plus 48 plus 46, or 157. Some of those are branch or claims offices of national groups, so it keeps the Florida-focused residential writers, an assumed 30%, or 47. Reaching each underwriting leader with a sample report on 25 of the carrier's own policies, at a 10% reply rate, gives 5 conversations; two pilots at $40,000 each would be $80,000 in first-year revenue. Working out which of 157 offices write Florida homes is the research step that Bebop does for each account.

Next step: see where Florida's listed insurers sit nationally in the largest insurance companies in the US, or the wider business market in companies in Florida.