When Tampa-based Slide Insurance registered for an initial public stock offering last week, one page of the filing quickly had people talking in the Florida insurance industry.
On page 132 of the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it shows that Slide founder and CEO Bruce Lucas in 2024 took home more than $21 million in salary, bonuses and stock awards – considerably more than CEOs at most other publicly traded, Florida-domiciled carriers. The package is not far behind the compensation levels for the heads of some of the largest insurance companies in the world, including Chubb, Allstate, AIG and Travelers.
Lucas’ wife, Shannon Lucas, the chief operating officer at Slide, was paid an additional $16.5 million, Slide’s Form S-1 filing indicates.
“Capitalism is a great system, but this is out of control,” said one Florida insurance executive who declined to be identified.
CEO Lucas, who launched Slide in 2021 after leading Heritage Insurance for eight years, has quickly built Slide from a fledgling startup to one of the larger property insurers in Florida, now with some 343,000 policies in force. But some in and out of the state say the outsized compensation package looks bad for a Florida insurance industry that’s still feeling the heat from national news reports and from policyholders hit by hefty premium increases in recent years.
“These are really shocking compensation numbers,” said Douglas Heller, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America. “What is the amount of money that Slide policyholders had to pay to cover this?”
Heller’s organization tracks carriers’ executive pay, based in part on insurance company reporting to the Nebraska Department of Insurance, required by a 1911 state law. He noted that the Lucas pay package may be even higher than the SEC filing shows. That’s because “emerging growth companies” are not required to fully explain executive compensation.
