Florida has the largest wind-mitigation grant program in the country, providing more than $300 millio
n to homeowners over the last few years and resulting in insurance premium discounts for thousands of people.
But it’s not enough. The program is not targeted at enough properties that would produce the most benefit for insurers, homeowners and state interests. And too ma
ny insureds and builders fail to see the return from retrofitting their homes or building stronger structures in the most hurricane-prone state.
That was the word from Florida professors, actuaries and insurance interests who participated in a panel discussion at the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation’s Insurance Summit, held last week in Tallahassee.
“If investing in upgrades adds as much value as you put into the upgrade, why aren’t all developers doing it?” asked session attendee Mark Tanner, an actuary with Insurance Strategies Consulting.
The chief reason is the upfront cost of building homes to “code-plus” standards that exceed most state building codes and stand tall in a storm, said Charles Nyce, pr
ofessor of risk management and insurance at Florida State University. Constructing to a true hurricane-resistant standard may add $20,000 to $30,000 in costs, he said. (Th
e My Safe Florida Home grant program provides matching grants only up to $10,000.)
And the savings or return on investment depends on many factors, including sale price of a pr
operty, locale, whether an actual windstorm reduced damage and showed the benefits of stronger construction, and other factors.
“It’s a hard sell,” Nyce said.
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Homeowners must be sold on less-fiscal benefits, such as peace of mind, avoiding the hassle of insurance claims, and avoiding the possibility of having to move out while hurricane repairs are made, said Gabriel Carillo, profess
or and program director of the Center for Risk Management and Insurance Education at the University of Central Florida.
“But I don’t know how you package that and sell it to people,” Carillo said.
There’s a better way, Nyce argued. It involves robust public-private partnerships between insurers, mortgage lenders and government funding, along with innov
ations such as a storm-resistance grading system, changes in accounting and tax rules, and, perhaps, the advent of home-hardening construction firms that also sell property insurance.
“Tesla sells insurance on its cars. Where are the mitigation companies that sell homeowners’ insurance?” Nyce said.
Most homeowner decisions are left to the homeowner. And with costs rising, most insureds wi
ll opt out of adding large upfront costs without a guaranteed return on investment. But new programs and new incentives could change t
hat, he said. In a paper published in November 2025 by the LeRoy Collins Institute at FSU, Nyce and other professors made some bold recommendations:
Develop an easy-to-grasp, uniform grading system for homes and their storm resistance measures. Comprehensive—not piecemeal or roof-only measures
—would see a higher grade, one that can be used to market properties and gain lower-cost loans. “Sharing this data with catastrophe modeler
s and insurers in the Florida property insurance market would help maximize the value of these investments. Creating a property-level mitigation database would be a key step forward,” the authors wrote.
