October 2020, CaseGlide’s Florida Claims Data Analysis

As the industry’s leading claims litigation management software provider, CaseGlide compiles a broad swath of claims data that represents a variety of segments and geographies. One of the most interesting that we regularly gather and analyze are litigated claims specific to the majority of Florida’s largest P&C insurance organizations.

For the fourth consecutive month, data from October indicated yet another surge in new litigated claim volume with 5,340 claims. That’s an increase of 9% over last month’s figure of 4,918. Put in perspective, this figure represents a year-over-year increase of 33% over new litigated claims from October 2019. It’s also the second-largest monthly figure over the past three years, narrowly trailing May 2019’s 5,474 new litigated claims.

Since 2018, Q3 and Q4 have traditionally revealed a decline in new litigated claim counts. But in true 2020 fashion, we’re seeing a bucking of that trend and a steady increase in volume beginning in May. It’s quite likely that this trend is COVID-19 related and potentially influenced by a final push of Hurricane Irma claims before the deadline in September. We’ll continue to monitor this through Q4 to see if there is any deviation in the pattern. If we experience a similar volume increase in November 2020, that new litigated claim volume will be the highest measured since we began analyzing volumes in 2014.

Industry specialists reinforce the assumption that what we’re currently seeing in Florida will linger. In a recent article for Insurance Journal, Amy O’Connor writes: “…carriers say they are still being hit by a considerable amount of first party litigation and excessive attorney fees. They point the finger at the state’s one-way attorney fee statute and the contingency fee multiplier for incentivizing inflated lawsuits against insurers.”

Of the 17 insurers we regularly monitor, 13 of them experienced positive month-over-month gains in new litigated claims, with two registering a greater than 30% increase. Of the four insurers who recorded declines, all four showed less than -10% M/M.

AOB litigated claims as a percentage of total litigated claims remained at 20% across the insurers analyzed, unchanged from September 2020. We continue to see that percentage fall from prior years—AOB% in October 2019 was an elevated 33% of new litigated claims, after reaching a high mark of 55% in May 2019. As stated in last month’s analysis, the passing of Florida House Bill 7065 in July of this year is a move that could cause that percentage to steadily decline over time.

Year to date, the top 10 AOB contractors in the state represent 60% of all AOB-related new litigated claims, with the top contractor alone representing 17%.

Geographic distribution of new litigated claims continues to be dominated by Miami-Dade County with 22% of claims, followed by Broward County at 16%, Lee County at 10% and Palm Beach County at 9%. Those percentages have not varied substantially over the past six months.

CaseGlide remains committed to observing this data closely, monitoring to see if these patterns persist and how the trends will impact insurers across Florida.