Slide Insurance in Florida
Slide Insurance is four years old and already the #3 residential insurer in Florida. The Tampa company founded in 2021 by Bruce and Shannon Lucas opened with a rescue — replacement policies for roughly 150,000 households of a failed carrier, effective at 12:01 a.m. with no coverage gap, by the company’s count — and has since added a Nasdaq listing, a record reinsurance program, and more than one in three of the policies the Citizens takeout program moved in 2025. This page lays out that record plus the practical part: Slide’s ratings, its policies, and the one-entry way to weigh its quote against 20+ other Florida homeowners carriers before you sign anything.
Slide at a glance
Carrier ratings verified directly with each rating agency.
Founded in 2021 — and opened with a rescue
Slide Insurance in Florida is a young company with an unusually eventful record. Co-founders Bruce and Shannon Lucas started it in Tampa in 2021 — Bruce founded and formerly led Heritage, another Florida homeowners carrier, from 2012 to 2020; Shannon is Slide’s president and chief operating officer — and backed it with an oversubscribed $100 million Series A round that November, raised before the carrier had written a policy. The company describes itself as a technology-enabled coastal specialty insurer, and by its own account the team behind it averages about 25 years in the business.
The first test arrived on opening day. Slide’s Florida underwriting company commenced business on March 1, 2022 — the same window in which St. Johns Insurance failed — and Slide issued replacement policies on its own paper, effective at 12:01 a.m., with no coverage gap. Roughly 150,000 households kept continuous coverage, by the company’s count, and more than 2,700 St. Johns agents were offered appointments so customers could keep the agent who knew their file.
A pattern followed. In February 2023, Slide acquired the renewal rights to more than 91,400 United Property & Casualty policies — roughly $272 million in premium — as UPC wound down: UPC’s policies were canceled, and Slide issued replacements of its own. The same transaction brought UPC’s underwriting records, property-level data spanning more than $1 trillion of insured value, into Slide’s pricing models. In February 2024 came a third book — the Florida renewal rights for Farmers-branded policies written through Truck Insurance Exchange. Keep the distinction straight, because it matters on your declarations page: in every case these were renewal rights and newly issued Slide policies, not the purchase of a failed company.
Citizens depopulation rounded out the arc — beginning in late 2023, Slide became a steady participant in the state program that moves policies from Citizens back to private carriers, a chapter big enough to get its own section below.
Four years later: #3 in Florida, Nasdaq-listed, and a record reinsurance year
Florida OIR market data (May 2026) ranks Slide the state’s third-largest residential insurer: more than 487,000 total policies in force, 485,748 of them personal residential — a book built in four years. In June 2025 the company went public on Nasdaq under the ticker SLDE, raising roughly $469 million and putting its results, board, and filings onto the public record where any policyholder can read them. The balance sheet grew with the book: company equity went from $102 million at the end of 2021 to $1.1 billion at the end of 2025.
For the 2026–27 storm season, Slide placed the largest catastrophe reinsurance program in its history — $5.46 billion of total limit, with $3.98 billion available for a single event, including $780 million of multi-year catastrophe bonds through its Purple Re program. One reading note so the letters don’t blur: every reinsurer on that program either carries a financial strength rating of A- or better or has fully collateralized its share. That standard describes the reinsurers standing behind Slide — Slide’s own rating is the Demotech grade covered below.
The Citizens takeout record: more than one in three
Slide has made Citizens depopulation a central way it grows. In 2025 it assumed 191,850 Citizens policies — more than one in three of every policy the program moved out of Citizens that year — after assuming roughly 136,000 in 2024. Each round ran under Florida OIR approval, with offer pricing, timelines, and policyholder choices set by the state’s rules. If a Slide offer letter is sitting on your counter, our guide to reading a Citizens takeout offer walks through the letter line by line.
One fact about those rounds deserves to be stated plainly, because it comes from the state rather than the company: when Florida’s insurance regulator reviewed Slide’s takeout conduct — the blackout-period rules that protect policyholders mid-transition, the caps on offer pricing, the limits on what may be assumed — the review noted no exceptions on any item. In a program that moves hundreds of thousands of households, a clean compliance sheet is exactly what you want the paperwork to show.
The question every assumed household asks next is the renewal. Citizens policies that moved to Slide renewed about 16% higher on average at their first renewal in 2025, and the company points to two concrete mechanisms: its policies carry more coverage than the Citizens form they replaced, and renewal pricing moves off Citizens’ rates and onto Slide’s own filed rate schedule. Any renewal — Slide’s included — is built from parts: what inflation did to your Coverage A rebuild limit, what your paperwork says about the roof, where your insurance score sits, and which endorsements changed since last term. Our guide to why Florida home insurance premiums move explains each of those drivers, and working with your agent, a side-by-side against 20+ Florida homeowners carriers shows whether the renewal number is also the best number available for your home.
How Slide is rated — and which Slide company is on your policy
Slide’s financial strength rating comes from Demotech: a Financial Stability Rating of A (Exceptional), affirmed in June 2026, and the affirmation covers both of Slide’s underwriting companies. For the fuller map of who rates Florida carriers and how to read each agency’s scale, see our guide to Florida home insurance financial strength ratings.
There is no AM Best grade to look up, and the absence says more about the market than about the company. AM Best’s approach grew up around national carriers whose risk spreads across dozens of states, while Florida’s homeowners specialists keep their entire book inside one hurricane-exposed state — and Demotech built its ratings for precisely that kind of insurer, which is why it grades most of the carriers on a Florida quote sheet. Slide’s own annual report names Demotech as its rating agency. Whoever the agency is, the homework is identical for every carrier we quote you: the agency, the grade, and the date it was last affirmed.
Now the entity precision, because it matters on a declarations page. Florida policies are written by Slide Insurance Company, an admitted Florida carrier — which places its Florida policyholders under the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association, the statutory backstop state law sets behind every admitted insurer here. Slide’s business in several other states runs through a second company, Slide Specialty Insurance Company, some of it on surplus-lines paper — a different regulatory footing. For a Florida homeowner the takeaway is simple: your policy rides the admitted Florida company, and the company name printed on your declarations page is the one your protections flow from.
Storm operations: an in-house claims arm and a 48-hour aerial playbook
Slide runs claims through its own in-house claims administrator — a subsidiary, not a rotating bench of outside vendors — and it has automated its first-notice-of-loss intake, a capability the company says proved particularly helpful during Hurricane Ian. After a catastrophe, the company states that within 48 hours it puts aerial imagery over every affected insured property and scores roof damage from the images, so the first conversation about your roof can start from photographs of your actual roof. The company also owns a mitigation-contractor arm for emergency stabilization work after a loss.
Storm results so far sit in the public filings: for 2025, Slide reported zero named-storm losses. If you ever need to file, report the claim to Slide directly — its automated intake is built for exactly that moment. The agency conversation belongs earlier: coverage, deductibles, and where the protection stops and starts, at 813.920.8181 on any day the weather isn’t the story. What a policy covers in any particular loss comes down to its own terms, so walking through yours together is where the claim process starts.
What Slide writes — and the coverage room above a Citizens policy
Slide’s Florida book is residential property: homeowners, condo unit-owners, and landlord policies, plus commercial-residential business — the master policies associations buy — which sits outside our personal-lines work and appears here for context.
Because so many of its policyholders arrived from Citizens, Slide publishes its own comparison of what its policies can carry that the Citizens form it replaced could not. The items below are Slide’s stated capabilities — available on qualifying policies, always subject to the policy’s own terms:
- Personal liability limits up to $500,000 — against the $100,000 that capped the Citizens policies it compares itself to, by the company’s account.
- Medical payments coverage of $5,000 — the guest-medical piece of a homeowners policy.
- Personal property up to 75% of Coverage A — more room for contents than the replaced form carried.
- Optional endorsements — screen-enclosure coverage, solar-equipment coverage, and equipment breakdown among them, each subject to eligibility and the policy’s terms.
One underwriting capability needs the careful sentence, and here it is. Slide states it can insure homes in flood zones without requiring flood insurance as a condition of the homeowners policy — a fact about Slide’s underwriting rules, not about your risk. The water question never goes away: some amount of flood coverage belongs on every Florida home, the real decision is how much, and what flood costs is driven by the specific property — its distance to a flooding source, its rebuild cost, its elevation — far more than by the zone on a map. A homeowners policy leaves rising water to a separate flood policy, so we price a flood option beside every home quote and let you see both numbers together.
Two ways to use this page
Already a Slide policyholder?
Plenty of Slide households arrived without ever shopping — a replacement policy in 2022, an assumption from Citizens since. Either way, the renewal deserves the same look any policy gets. Share your current coverage through Canopy Connect, our secure policy-sharing link that pulls the details across without retyping, and working with your agent, see how your coverage, your credits, and your price hold up once 20+ Florida homeowners carriers weigh in on the same home.
Shopping and seeing Slide quoted?
A Slide quote means your home fits the appetite of the state’s #3 residential insurer — worth keeping on the table, and worth pricing in context. One entry with us returns Slide’s number with 20+ other Florida homeowners carriers on the same sheet, every quote built from the same coverage answers, and a licensed Florida agent to walk the differences with you before anything gets signed.
Slide Insurance: your questions, answered
Is Slide Insurance a legitimate company?
It is — and the paper trail is unusually deep for a company its age. Slide is an admitted Florida carrier regulated by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, the state’s #3 residential insurer with more than 487,000 total policies in force (Florida OIR data, May 2026), and a public company on Nasdaq (SLDE) filing audited results every quarter. Its Demotech Financial Stability Rating of A (Exceptional) was affirmed in June 2026, and behind its Florida policyholders sits the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association — the claims backstop Florida statute places behind admitted insurers.
Who owns Slide — and is it publicly traded?
Slide was co-founded in Tampa in 2021 by Bruce and Shannon Lucas — Bruce founded and formerly led Heritage, another Florida homeowners carrier, from 2012 to 2020, and Shannon serves as Slide’s president and chief operating officer. Since June 2025 the company has traded on Nasdaq under the ticker SLDE, following an IPO that raised roughly $469 million. Public ownership means the ownership question answers itself: the shareholder base, the board, the executive team, and the financial results are all in SEC filings anyone can read.
How is Slide rated — and does it have an AM Best rating?
Demotech rates Slide A (Exceptional) on its Financial Stability Rating scale — affirmed in June 2026, and the affirmation covers both of its underwriting companies. There is no AM Best rating, and in the Florida homeowners market that’s the standard arrangement rather than a gap: AM Best’s model centers on carriers spread across many states, while Demotech’s was built for specialists concentrated where the storms are, so Demotech grades most of the carriers on any Florida quote sheet. If a lender asks about the rating, the Demotech grade and its affirmation date are the answer to bring — the same two facts we verify for every carrier we quote.
Is Slide Insurance financially stable?
The public record gives you real numbers instead of adjectives. Company equity grew from $102 million at the end of 2021 to $1.1 billion at the end of 2025. The 2026–27 catastrophe reinsurance program is the largest in company history — $5.46 billion of total limit, $3.98 billion of it available for a single event — and every reinsurer on the program is rated A- or better or fully collateralized, a fact about the reinsurers backing Slide rather than a Slide rating. For 2025 the company reported zero named-storm losses, and Demotech affirmed its A (Exceptional) rating in June 2026. Because Slide reports as a public company, those figures update in filings you can check yourself.
Slide sent me a Citizens takeout offer — what should I know before the deadline?
Start with what the letter is: Florida OIR approved Slide to assume policies from Citizens, and Slide selected yours. In 2025 it assumed 191,850 Citizens policies — more than one in three of everything the program moved that year — and the state’s review of its takeout conduct noted no exceptions on any compliance item. Then check the math that controls your choices: when Slide’s estimated premium lands within 20% of your Citizens renewal estimate, Florida law ends your eligibility to remain with Citizens. Assumed policies that renewed with Slide in 2025 averaged about 16% higher — the company ties that to richer coverage than the Citizens form and to renewal pricing moving onto Slide’s own filed rate schedule. Before the date on your Offer Form, working with your agent, compare the same house across 20+ Florida homeowners carriers, so the choice you register reflects every option you had.
What states does Slide write in?
Florida is the heart of the book, and Florida policies are written by Slide Insurance Company, the admitted carrier — also licensed in South Carolina. A second underwriting company, Slide Specialty Insurance Company, is licensed in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and South Carolina, and entered California on a surplus-lines basis. The distinction is worth a glance at your declarations page: admitted and surplus-lines policies sit on different regulatory footings, and the company named there is the one that holds your policy. For a Florida home, that name is the admitted Florida carrier.
Do I buy Slide through an agent, or direct?
Both routes exist. Slide calls itself an agency-focused company in its own annual report — more than 5,000 independent agents offer its policies — and it also operates a direct channel. The agent route carries a practical advantage no single-carrier channel can: at our agency, the same entry that prices Slide prices 20+ other Florida homeowners carriers, so you learn in one step whether Slide’s number is also the market’s best answer for your home.
How do I file a Slide claim?
Report the claim to Slide — its first-notice-of-loss intake is automated, its claims are handled by an in-house claims administrator, and after major storms the company states it flies aerial imagery over every affected insured property within 48 hours and scores roof damage from the images. Your agent’s value shows up before that day arrives — talking through deductibles, limits, and how the policy is built, at 813.920.8181 — so when a claim does open, the coverage questions are already answered. Coverage in any loss comes down to the policy’s own terms, so the claim conversation starts with going through yours together.
