Ormond Beach-based Security First Insurance, with almost 50,000 dwelling/fire policies in Florida, announced it has cut average rates and is offering new discounts for DP policyholders.
The carrier said it has reduced rates by an average of 5.6% for its dwelling/fire basic policies, statewide, effective July 15. For dwelling owner (DF3-DO) policies,
Security First has expanded eligibility, added new premium discounts, and has enhanced disappearin
g deductibles. The dwelling owner policy enhancement took effect June 15 for new and renewal business.
The changes are another indication of a much-improved Florida property insurance market, which was experiencing regular, double-digit rate hikes almo
st annually for many carriers— until after the 2022 legislative reforms were enacted. Security First in Octobe
r announced an average 8% rate decrease for thousands of homeowners. That followed a 5.2% cut.
Other carriers have made similar rate reductions in the last two years, as the effects of the legislative reforms have spread through the market. Florida Penin
sula Insurance in July 2025 filed for an 8.4% average decrease in homeowners’ policies. Citizens Property Insurance Corp. produced an average 8.8% reduction for
HO multiperil policies earlier this year, and Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance announced a 3.3% rate decrease in January, to name a few.
The Florida Supreme Court just made it a little easier for workplace assault victims to claim workers’ compensation benefits, even if it can’t be proven that an attack was work-related.
The high court on Thursday overturned a 2023 ruling from Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeals that had narrowly defined what could be considered a compensa
See more beautiful photo albums Here >>>
ble injury. The district appellate court, which handles all Florida workers’ compensation appeals, had erred and had essentially put words in the mouth of lawmakers w
ho drafted the current version of the state’s workers comp statute, the Supreme Court justices wrote in the July 9 opinion.
“Here, in repeatedly framing the act of ‘walking’ as the only relevant ‘work performed’ and in concluding that that discrete task must ‘itself’ have ’caused’
the injury, the First District not only conflated ‘arising out of’ and ’caused by,’ but also misread th
e statute to say ‘[the task] performed [at the time of injury]’ rather than just ‘work performed,'” reads the Supreme Court opinion in Bouayad vs. Normandy Insurance.
A prominent Florida workers’ comp defense attorney called it the most significant workers’ compensation case of the present time, but one that simply resets t
he work-relatedness standard to the threshold established by a 1980 court decision known as Strother vs. Morrison Cafeteria.
“This is not a ‘setback’ for industry but really a restoration of the status quo pre–Bouayad,” defense attorney George Kagan said in an emailed bulletin. “The Court makes clear: ‘To be sure … not all workplace assaults are compensable.'”
