More Than 4 out of 10 Florida Homeowners Wait Over 60 Days for Insurance Claim Payments, the Worst in the Nation

Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Sep. 14, 2026 — Among Florida homeowners who filed damage claims and received some payment from their insurers in 2025, 41.6% were kept waiting at least 60 days, the highest delay rate in the nation, according to a Weiss Ratings analysis of NAIC data. 

The average delay rate beyond 60 days for homeowners in Hawaii was 35.4% of claims paid, while in California it was 34%, and in Nebraska 31%. 

States with the Most Delays in Paying Homeowner Claims

Weiss Ratings founder Martin D. Weiss commented: "A delayed claim payment can leave a family effectively homeless or trapped in an unsafe house while they wait for the money to rebuild. That is the human cost behind Florida's 41.6% delay rate."

How Delays Can Be Driven by a Perverse Financial Incentive

Insurers collect premiums ahead of time and invest those premiums along with their accumulated surplus. When payments are delayed, the company has more time to earn investment income on those funds.

Based on the 2025 official filings by the nation’s home insurers, they had invested assets of $305.5 billion, generating $28.1 million in income per day. Since they paid $100.7 billion in homeowners claims during the year, Weiss Ratings calculates that each additional day of delayed claims payment could generate approximately $9.3 million in investment income, or $65.1 million for every seven days of delay.

“The investment income earned by insurers typically exceeds the income earned from the business of underwriting insurance policies,” Weiss said. “And unfortunately, for many insurers, that can create a financial incentive to delay payments more than necessary or to allocate fewer resources to the improvement of payment systems.” 

States with the Fewest Delays in Paying Homeowner Claims

In contrast, home insurers in four other states kept the average rate of delays below 20%. In West Virginia, the state with the lowest rate of delays, only 13% of claims were delayed beyond 60 days, while the average delay rate in Kansas was 14.7%, the second best among the 50 states. 

Hurricanes Do Not Explain the Delays

Florida insurers may point to hurricane claims as a reason for longer waits. But NOAA recorded no hurricane impact or landfall in the continental United States in 2025. Meanwhile, Florida's delay rate was significantly lower in 2018, at 36.8%, when Category 5 Hurricane Michael struck the state. 

Consumers can compare their own state with Florida and the rest of the country here. The alphabetical lookup table shows each jurisdiction’s delay rate in 2025 compared to 2018. 

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About Weiss Ratings: Weiss Ratings is the nation's leading independent provider of 100% unbiased ratings on stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, cryptocurrencies, banks, credit unions and insurance companies, covering more than 60,000 institutions and investments. Since its founding in 1971, Weiss Ratings has never accepted compensation from the companies it rates, and it never gives rated companies the opportunity to preview or suppress a rating before publication. All Weiss insurance company ratings are available at https://weissratings.com/en/insurance.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the Weiss ratings of U.S. life and health insurers outperformed those of A.M. Best by 3-to-1 in warning of future financial difficulties, while also greatly outperforming those of Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. The New York Times reported that Weiss “was the first to warn of the dangers and say so unambiguously,” and Barron’s called Weiss Ratings “the leader in identifying vulnerable companies.”