Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Wildfire

Posted on July 6, 2026

As Florida’s homeowners insurance market seems to be settling, wildfires create a new crisis.

By Heather Mawn

Rough Notes - 2026 Florida Special ReportFor the better part of a decade, Florida’s insurance market has been defined by two things: hurricanes and a litigation economy. As hurricanes kept battering the coast, predatory Assignment of Benefits schemes and uncapped attorney fees made the aftermath worse. Eventually, Florida accounted for nearly three-quarters of all homeowners insurance lawsuits in the nation, driving carriers out and leaving agents and homeowners with soaring premiums and shrinking options.¹

Tort reforms passed in 2022 and 2023 brought some welcome relief, bringing litigation filings down, making space for new carriers, and pushing Citizens back toward its intended role as insurer of last resort.¹?² The market appears to be finding its footing. However, while the industry’s attention has been fixed on the coast, a different threat has been building inland. Wildfire has become a real and present danger for Florida residents, and most standard policies aren’t equipped to handle it.

The Current State of Florida’s Wildfires

As of April 2026, nearly 80% of Florida was in extreme drought conditions.³ More than 1,797 wildfires have already burned over 103,000 acres and the National Interagency Fire Center projects above normal wildfire potential through peak season, which runs through June.? Florida ranks third in the nation for total homes on the edge of wildlands, also known as Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) zones, behind only Texas and California.? Hurricane debris from Ian, Helene, and Milton has made it worse, turning Central and Southwest Florida into a tinderbox.?

The Insurance Blind Spot

Fire damage is a named peril on standard HO-3 policies, so technically, wildfire is covered. But the HO-3 form was designed for structure fires that are fought quickly by a well-equipped department drawing from pressurized municipal water. Suppression is assumed, response is fast, and total loss is the exception. Wildland fires rarely follow this model.

According to the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS), wind-borne embers, not direct flame contact, account for up to 90% of home ignitions during wildfire events.? What often happens in a wildfire scenario is that embers travel miles ahead of a fire front and ignite structures from the outside in through roof materials, unscreened vents, and wood decks. Because the main fire has not even arrived, there is no engine company responding, and by the time anyone does respond, there is nothing left to save. It is a loss profile the standard policy was never priced or structured for, and it applies to any home in the path of a wildfire, regardless of location or protection class.

The problem compounds for properties with ISO Protection Class 10 (PC 10) ratings, those situated more than 5 road miles from a recognized fire station and without a creditable water source within 1,000 feet. Here the issue isn’t just whether the policy will perform, it’s whether a policy exists at all. With no suppression response to assume, most admitted carriers won’t write these properties. Watching an entire class of properties being cut out of the market is nothing new for Florida agents. The difference is that now they need to be focusing inland, as well as along the coast.

Learning from History

A Weiss Ratings study of NAIC data published in October 2025 found that Florida led all disaster-prone states in homeowners insurance non-renewal rates, with 3.35% of policies non-renewed in 2024, up from 1.98% in 2018.? Those numbers were built from hurricane losses. When carriers couldn’t model the risk profitably, they stopped writing it, and entire regions lost access to the standard market. California saw the same thing happen with wildfire. After the 2017 and 2018 fire seasons, catastrophic losses forced modeling updates, carriers repriced or exited entire regions, and more than 100,000 homeowners lost coverage over the following five years.? Given Florida’s drought conditions, fuel loads, and WUI exposure, the conditions for this same pattern to repeat are already in place.

What Agents Can Do

For agents, the first step is recognizing that wildfires are now part of the risk conversation in Florida. That means coaching clients on steps they can take to protect themselves, such as creating defensible space and adding ember-resistant vents, Class A roofing, and noncombustible siding. These measures won’t guarantee coverage, but they will give homeowners a fighting chance in the event of a wildfire and give underwriters something to work with when considering the risk.

On the placement side, many of the carriers that re-entered Florida’s market on the strength of tort reform are still underwriting with a hurricane lens. Wildfire exposure in Florida’s interior isn’t in their modeling or their appetite statements. The agents best positioned to help are the ones with access to E&S carriers that write what most of the admitted market won’t: PC 10 zones, rural properties, brush-exposed locations, and high-risk coastal regions.

A Carrier Built for the Hard-to-Place

Aspera Insurance Services began placing hard-to-insure, hurricane-exposed properties in Florida and up and down the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts more than a decade ago. We watched the coastal market harden and saw carriers exit. We were able to stay in the market because we had the backing of an E&S carrier with a long-standing A (Excellent) rating from A.M. Best and the appetite to write the nuanced risks that standard markets avoid. In 2024, we started expanding inland in the Gulf and Atlantic states, and in 2025 opened access in California and Colorado, where carrier withdrawal and inadequate coverage had already played out due to wildfire exposure. Today, we access coverage for site-built and manufactured homes in PC 10 zones, wildfire-exposed locations, and high-risk coastal regions in 12 states, with more to come.

We’ve seen firsthand the difference experience makes when a coverage crisis hits. Although your clients may not know they have a wildfire problem, you do. Now’s the time to find a broker with the experience and carrier access to handle what’s coming.

Heather Mawn is the Personal Lines Division Manager at Aspera Insurance Services, Inc., an underwriting manager for personal lines risks specializing in hard-to-place accounts. She has led the Personal Lines team at Aspera since 2018 and has 10 years of underwriting experience. For more information on working with Aspera, email marketing@asperains.com or visit asperains.com.

 

Notes

  1. Sampson, David. “Florida Insurance Reforms Deliver Relief as Litigation Drops and Rates Ease.” Florida Politics, Jan. 19, 2026.
  2. Gen Re. “Florida Property Tort Reforms — Evolving Conditions.” Sept. 24, 2025.
  3. NASA Earth Observatory; U.S. Drought Monitor, drought.gov, April 2026.
  4. Scanlan, Dan. “Wildfire Risks Could Grow Over Next 10 Weeks, Officials Warn.” Jacksonville Today, April 21, 2026.
  5. USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station. “Understanding the Wildland-Urban Interface (1990–2020).”
  6. Perez, Tomas. “Drought Expected to Strengthen in Southwest Florida as Wildfires Burn All Around.” WGCU PBS, March 20, 2025.
  7. Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. “Damage Analysis of 2017-2018 Wildfires Shows Importance of Mitigation.” July 13, 2020.
  8. Weiss Ratings Press Team. “Homeowners in Florida and California Dropped by Their Insurance Companies at Highest Rate in Nation.” Weiss Ratings, October 29, 2025.
  9. McKinsey & Company. “Forging a Resilient Future for California’s Homeowners and Insurers.” October 22, 2025.