Heritage Insurance in Florida
Heritage was formed in St. Petersburg in August 2012, wrote its first policies four months later, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange before it turned two. Today it’s a Tampa-headquartered public company (NYSE: HRTG) writing across 14 states plus Hawaii, with three straight profitable years in its filings — the middle one earned while three hurricanes made Florida landfall. Below: the story, the two ratings and how to read each, what Heritage writes here at home, and how one entry puts its quote on a sheet with 20+ other Florida homeowners carriers.
Heritage at a glance
Carrier ratings verified directly with each rating agency.
Founded on Central Avenue, built beyond one state
Heritage was formed in August 2012, working from first offices on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg — a Tampa Bay founding in the literal, street-level sense — and it was writing its first policies that December, four months in. It grew quickly through the early Citizens-depopulation years (that history gets its own section below), and in May 2014, not yet two years old, it listed on the New York Stock Exchange — one of the earliest Florida-domestic listings of its generation. It trades there still, under the ticker HRTG.
Then Heritage took a path few Florida-born homeowners carriers take: it deliberately built beyond one state. In 2016 it acquired Zephyr, a Hawaii hurricane specialist; in 2017 it added NBIC, a Northeast regional insurer. The company now calls itself a super-regional — its term — writing across 14 states plus Hawaii, and by design Florida accounts for about 29% of its total insured exposure, per its filings. The mechanism matters more than the map: spreading exposure across many storm geographies means no single state’s season carries the whole company. And the headquarters never moved — Heritage runs it all from Tampa.
The leadership line is short and steady. Bruce Lucas founded the company and led it from 2012 until late 2020. Since December 2020, the CEO has been Ernie Garateix — a Heritage veteran who rose through the company to chief operating officer before the promotion, which kept the institutional memory in the building. The chairman is Richard Widdicombe, Heritage’s former president, and beneath the executive row the company keeps its claims operation in-house, with more than 250 claims professionals on staff.
Three profitable years in a row, read from the filings
Heritage reports its results to the SEC every quarter, which means the story here comes with documentation. After the hard-market years that strained every carrier in this state, Heritage posted three consecutive profitable years — and the middle one was 2024, the season three hurricanes made Florida landfall. A profit earned through a three-landfall year is the stress test a Florida homeowner would design on purpose, and it’s on the public record.
Then came the numbers the company reports as its best. 2025 closed as a record year, with $195.6 million in net income and a 73.1% combined ratio — in plain English, about 73 cents of every premium dollar went to claims and expenses, leaving a genuine underwriting margin. The second quarter of 2026 set another company record, and shareholders’ equity — the capital standing under every policy — more than doubled across two years. None of this predicts any single renewal or claim; what it documents is direction, and the direction is the one a policyholder wants to see.
Storm response, measured in dates and dollars
The 2024 season gives the claims story specifics rather than adjectives, all from the company’s own reporting. The day after Hurricane Milton crossed Florida, Heritage had more than 2,000 adjusters and more than 200 emergency-response vendors staged and working. Within about three months, more than 9,000 claims from the 2024 hurricanes were settled and more than $140 million paid — roughly 90% of the hurricane claims reported that year, closed.
The follow-through has structure behind it: claims at Heritage are handled by the company’s own in-house staff, so the people working a Florida catastrophe are Heritage employees, not a workforce assembled after landfall. The agency’s part is played before any landfall: knowing your coverage, your deductibles — hurricane and otherwise — and what the policy is built to do, so call or text 813.920.8181 with those questions while the radar is clear.
Behind the claims operation stands the catastrophe reinsurance program every Florida carrier builds its season on, and Heritage’s 2026–27 placement — announced by the company — reads well from a policyholder’s chair: more than $2.2 billion of limit, placed at a cost $63 million lower than the year before, including $712 million of multi-year protection — $550 million of it in fully collateralized catastrophe bonds, meaning the money is already set aside — with the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund taken at 90%. Reinsurers reprice a carrier’s risk every year with their own capital at stake; a program above $2.2 billion bought for less is their read on the direction of Heritage’s book, expressed in dollars.
How Heritage is rated — two agencies, two scales
Heritage Property & Casualty, the group’s admitted Florida insurer, carries two financial-strength grades, each checkable at its source:
- Demotech: Financial Stability Rating of A (Exceptional), affirmed June 2026 — a strong mark from the agency that reviews the bulk of Florida’s homeowners specialists.
- KBRA: BBB+ insurance financial strength, Stable outlook, affirmed December 2025 — investment grade from Kroll Bond Rating Agency, and a grade the Florida insurer held straight through the market’s hardest years.
Hold the two on their own scales. Demotech and KBRA run different models with different letter systems, so an A from one and a BBB+ from the other are two separate opinions to read side by side — not a pair to average, and not a contradiction. The reading that serves you has three parts for any carrier: the agency, the grade, and the affirmation date.
As for AM Best — it does not rate Heritage, and if your instinct is to treat that as a gap, recalibrate the instinct to this market: the raters covering most of the companies that write Florida homes are Demotech and KBRA, whose methods were shaped around storm-concentrated books, and an AM Best grade is the exception on a Florida homeowners quote sheet rather than the price of admission. Our guide to Florida home insurance financial strength ratings lays out how each agency reads this market and how to read each agency.
One protection comes from statute rather than a rating desk: Heritage P&C is an admitted Florida carrier, which brings its Florida policyholders under the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association — the protection state law establishes for the customers of every admitted insurer.
What Heritage writes in Florida — and how it’s sold
The Florida shelf, line by line:
- Homeowners (HO-3) — the anchor line, written for owner-occupied homes.
- Condo unit-owners (HO-6) — the form condominium ownership calls for; more below on why Heritage’s condo credentials run deeper than the unit policy.
- Landlord (DP-3) — the dwelling-fire form for a house you own and rent out, and a lane this agency works steadily. Rentals carry their own underwriting logic — tenancy, updates and systems, the documented roof — and Heritage is one of the Florida markets we put on a landlord comparison, where the property’s facts decide which carrier fits it best.
- Endorsement options — equipment coverage, jewelry and valuables, replacement-cost contents, dog liability, and identity-theft protection are among the add-ons, each subject to the policy’s terms and eligibility.
- Not on the Florida shelf: renters (HO-4) — Heritage doesn’t offer it here, so renters compare through the other markets we quote.
Now the condo context. Through its commercial-residential business, Heritage insures roughly 2,500 Florida condominium associations, with more than $37 billion of association property on its books — one of the larger association books in the state. We’re a personal-lines agency, so association placements aren’t our work; the fact earns its place here because of what it means for unit owners: the company quoting your HO-6 also underwrites association buildings at scale. An HO-6 is built to insure what a master policy doesn’t — the unit’s interior, your contents, your liability — with the boundary set by your association’s documents and the policy’s own terms. Your association can provide the master policy’s certificate; with that in your file, working with your agent, setting the unit’s limits is the first task.
How it’s sold: through independent agents — more than 2,500 of them, about a quarter working through eight master agency networks. Our agency is among the appointed, and our owner has served on Heritage’s agency council boards over the years. What that buys you is practical rather than ceremonial: current knowledge of Heritage’s programs and territories, and reachable humans at the carrier when a quote or a claim needs one — folded into a comparison where Heritage’s number lands beside 20+ other Florida homeowners carriers instead of standing alone.
Where Heritage stands in Florida — said plainly
Here are the Florida numbers without varnish: about 109,000 personal residential policies in force — the state’s #21 residential insurer (Florida OIR data, May 2026) — written from a Tampa headquarters, inside a group whose spread keeps Florida to roughly 29% of total insured exposure. The count has held near level rather than swung, and that was the plan: Heritage spent the hard-market stretch managing its Florida exposure territory by territory, filing for the rates each territory’s results required.
By its own filings, that phase has concluded. Heritage reports rate adequacy across more than 90% of its portfolio, and every territory it judges rate-adequate has been reopened to new business — so a Heritage quote is available again across much of the state, selectively and through its agents rather than everywhere at once. For a shopper, the practical translation is short: whether your address sits in an open territory is settled by running the quote, which costs nothing and takes one entry.
Heritage’s Citizens history runs deeper than most carriers’ — it was present at the start. The company was built during the original depopulation era, taking part in thirteen Citizens assumption rounds between December 2012 and December 2014, the program’s first generation; by the end of 2014, roughly three-quarters of its personal book had come over from Citizens. Today the growth engine is different: Heritage doesn’t participate in the assumption rounds, and new Florida business arrives through its agents, one quoted home at a time. Neither path is better or worse — they’re two ways a Florida book gets built — and if a takeout letter from another carrier is what’s on your kitchen counter, our guide to Citizens takeout offers walks through the letter, the 20% rule, and the deadline it carries.
And the rate question, handled straight: this page prints no Heritage rate percentages, because we print rate figures only when we’ve verified them at the source. What moves your individual renewal is mechanical either way — the inflation adjustment on your Coverage A rebuild limit, your home’s documented roof age, your insurance score, endorsements added or dropped, and the weight each carrier’s model gives each input. Our guide to why Florida home insurance premiums move breaks those drivers down one by one, and working with your agent, a renewal review sets your policy’s inputs beside where 20+ Florida homeowners carriers price the same home — so the number you renew at has context around it.
Two ways to use this page
Already a Heritage policyholder?
You’re insured by a rated, publicly reporting carrier — and the policy still deserves an annual once-over, because rebuild limits drift with construction costs and discounts only pay once they’re written in. Share the policy through Canopy Connect, a secure link that hands us your declarations page without any retyping, and working with your agent, check the coverage, the credits, and the price against where 20+ other Florida homeowners carriers put the same home.
Shopping and seeing Heritage quoted?
Then your home likely sits in one of the territories Heritage has reopened — a current, useful data point about your address. Keep the quote and add the context: one entry with us returns Heritage’s number on a sheet with 20+ other Florida homeowners carriers, every quote built from the same coverage answers, and a licensed Florida agent to explain where the quotes separate and why.
Heritage Insurance: your questions, answered
Is Heritage Insurance legit — and is it any good?
The legitimacy half is quickly settled: Heritage is a public company whose shares have traded on the New York Stock Exchange (HRTG) since 2014, which puts audited financials and quarterly filings behind everything on this page. On the strength half, the record shows a Tampa-headquartered insurer rated A (Exceptional) by Demotech — affirmed June 2026 — and BBB+ with a Stable outlook by KBRA, writing about 109,000 Florida personal residential policies (#21 statewide, Florida OIR data, May 2026) inside a group spread across 14 states plus Hawaii. Whether it’s good for your home is the one question no rating answers — that takes its quote on a sheet beside 20+ other Florida homeowners carriers, which is the comparison we build.
Who owns Heritage Insurance — and is it publicly traded?
Heritage Insurance Holdings is owned by its public shareholders: it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2014 — one of the earliest listings among Florida-born home insurers of its generation — and trades under the ticker HRTG. The Tampa-headquartered holding company owns Heritage Property & Casualty, the admitted Florida insurer, along with NBIC in the Northeast (added in 2017) and Zephyr in Hawaii (added in 2016). For a policyholder, public ownership means the company’s results, leadership, and capital position are published every quarter rather than taken on faith.
Why doesn’t Heritage have an AM Best rating?
Heritage is graded by Demotech — a Financial Stability Rating of A (Exceptional), affirmed June 2026 — and by KBRA, at BBB+ with a Stable outlook, affirmed December 2025. AM Best is not one of its raters, and on a Florida quote sheet that’s the usual arrangement: the agencies reviewing most of the carriers writing this state’s homes are Demotech and KBRA, whose methods were built around storm-concentrated books. Read each grade on its own agency’s scale — the two use different letter systems, and neither converts into the other — then check the affirmation dates. That’s the same three-part reading we do for every carrier we quote.
Is Heritage leaving Florida?
No. What the record shows is different and more specific: for several years Heritage deliberately held its Florida personal book near level while it brought rates in line territory by territory, and its filings describe that phase as complete — rate adequacy across more than 90% of the portfolio, with every rate-adequate territory reopened for new business. The Florida book stands at about 109,000 personal residential policies (#21 statewide, Florida OIR data, May 2026), the headquarters is in Tampa, and 2025 was the most profitable year in company history. A group built so no single state dominates its exposure is diversified — and the home state is still the home state.
Does Heritage write condo insurance in Florida?
Yes — on both sides of the condominium world. Unit owners get the HO-6, the form condominium ownership calls for, covering the unit’s interior, your contents, and your personal liability, subject to the policy’s terms. And through its commercial-residential business, Heritage insures roughly 2,500 Florida condominium associations — one of the larger association books in the state — so the underwriting shop pricing your unit also prices buildings like yours at scale. An HO-6 is built to insure what the master policy doesn’t, with the boundary set by your association’s documents and your policy’s own terms. The practical first step is yours: request the master policy’s certificate from your association — with it in your file, working with your agent, setting the unit’s limits is the first task.
Will Heritage quote my rental house?
Heritage writes the DP-3 in Florida — the dwelling-fire form for a house you own and rent out — and landlord placements are one of this agency’s standing lanes. Whether Heritage turns out to be the strongest market for your particular rental is decided by the property’s facts: construction and age, the documented roof, location, and how it’s tenanted. That’s a comparison question — one entry prices the rental across our DP-3 markets, Heritage among them, and the quote sheet shows which market fits your address best.
What’s the connection between Heritage, Bruce Lucas, and Slide?
Lineage. Bruce Lucas founded Heritage in 2012 and led it until late 2020; he went on to found Slide, a separate Tampa Bay carrier, and the two companies have run independently since. Heritage’s CEO from December 2020 forward is Ernie Garateix, a company veteran who came up through operations as chief operating officer, with former company president Richard Widdicombe serving as chairman. If both names show up when you compare carriers, compare them on their present-day terms — ratings, appetite, and a quote for your home — the same way this page treats Heritage.
How do I file a Heritage claim?
File the loss with Heritage directly, through the claims contact printed on your policy documents — the company handles claims with an in-house staff of more than 250 claims professionals, and going straight to them is the fastest way into that system. What your agent adds comes beforehand: because our owner has served on Heritage’s agency council boards, the coverage and deductible guidance you get before a loss draws on unusually close knowledge of how the carrier’s programs work — call or text 813.920.8181 with those questions any time. Coverage for any particular loss comes down to the policy’s own terms, so walking through yours together belongs at the start of the claim, not the end.
