What will 2 major hurricanes mean for Florida's insurance industry?

Milton and Helene, two major hurricanes in the same region and a very short span of time. That has put the spotlight though now on the insurance industry. Local 10 Laryn Livingston is in our newsroom now with what homeowners in florida really need to know. We are all listening. Laryn Christie, two major storms. As you said, they're back to back raising concerns and plenty of questions. One of them I took straight to an insurance expert. Could we reach a point where there are no private insurers here in the state of florida? And the answer, the response was a confident no. We've seen Helene and Milton, two names many Floridians won't soon forget as they recover many hope to rebuild. The hurricanes we've seen today prior to Milton were very moderate loss events. We're talking approximately 1-2 billion dollar losses, which is where insurance steps in. If you have it, I called up Mark Friedlander with the Insurance Information Institute and he says it's important to note much of the damage we're seeing is from flooding. That's not property insurance and the florida property insurance market, he says, is in its strongest financial position in many years. No companies are planning to leave florida. In fact, companies are coming into florida now because the market conditions have improved so much due to the legislative changes. We have nine new companies in florida this year. He also says the global reinsurance market, essentially insurance for insurance companies, is also in good shape for those that are speculating about companies going and solvent companies just pulling out of the market. We do not see that happening based on the 2024 hurricane activity we've experienced here in florida, which outside of seeing the storm pass also brings another side of and that insurance expert there says citizens, the state insurer is actually reducing its number of policyholders by the tens of thousands and those folks are going to private insurers, which is another positive sign, he says. And the key takeaway here, flood insurance shouldn't be an option for anyone here in the state of florida, but definitely a necessity. That's the latest here from the news. Larry Livingston, local 10 news.