ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — As Florida lawmakers are examining how insurance companies use artificial intelligence, one St. Petersburg-based insurance company is showing us how they are implementing AI to grow their business in a now competitive Florida insurance market.
GROWING AS A NEW INSURANCE COMPANY IN FLORIDA
We first visited Patriot Select and Property Casualty insurance last April, after they were approved by the state to operate as one of the newest insurance companies in the state. So far, 17 new insurance companies have entered Florida's market after the 2022 and 2023 insurance reforms.
"It's small but kind of turning into a bee hive," said CEO John Rollins who sat down with Tampa Bay 28 anchor Nadeen Yanes, who has been covering the impact of insurance issues in the Sunshine State.
The company quickly growing it's books, by participating in the Citizens Property Insurance "depopulation" process, taking out thousands of customers from Citizens books.
"We'll take out about 25,000 policies total this year," Rollins told me last April. That number is now up to about 26,000 policies today.
WATCH: Florida insurance companies embrace AI tools while state considers new regulations
That number continues growing as the company competes for customers in the open market, targeting homeowners who may be shopping their policies around.
This is where AI is comes in.
HOW AI CAN BE USED FOR INSURANCE
Rollins said Patriot Select uses artificial intelligence in the intake process, to help determine whether a homeowner receives coverage or not.
"We want to be put in front of more customers by independent agents, but we also want to be able to underwrite those customers quickly accurately," Rollins said. "So if we do have to say no we say no quickly and for a very clear reason, and if we say yes, which we rather do, we have the data we need."
Rollins said the company uses publicly available data for their AI systems. Similar to how Google Street View cars capture images of streets, companies purchase aerial footage of roofs. They even pull interior photos from real estate sites like Redfin and Zillow.
Joe Price, Patriot Select's head underwriter, demonstrated their in-house AI roof analyzer.
"This is actually one of the tools that I created. It's an in house roof condition analyzer," Price said. "Usually you can tell good roofs, you can tell bad roofs but there are ones that lay in the middle it's hard to make a decision."
Price took screenshots from homeowners' wind mitigation reports and inputs them into the AI analyzer.
"This one is a three tap shingle. The roof on this one, I believe, was 18 years old. Then I'll do that and evaluate based on the pictures. The more pictures that I feed it, the more in tune it gets," Price said.
The system then scores the homeowner's roof using a color-coded system.
"The greens are it's good. The blues are something to monitor, the orange or pinkish color, flesh color, that's something to pay attention," Price said.
STATE LAWMAKERS LOOK TO REGULATE AI
This development comes as the state prioritizes AI regulation during this legislative session. Lawmakers have filed bills in both the House and Senate regarding AI and insurance, requiring humans—not computers—to make final decisions, especially when denying claims.
"While these tools can improve speed and efficiency no Floridian should ever have a claim denied based solely on an automated output," said Representative Hillary Cassel, presenting the bill late last year.
The bill passed the committees in the House, but it has not moved in the Senate.
A report from KPMG surveying 110 insurance CEOs shows that 73% of insurance companies consider AI a top investment priority.
Rollins emphasized that Patriot Select does not use AI for claims decisions and ensures humans always make final determinations.
"At Patriot Select I can't speak for other companies but we are not interested in taking either the financial risk or reputational risk of doing a cost benefit and saying we will handle claims a certain way we will use and abuse AI and we will pay the fine we can not afford to operate like that," Rollins said.
Rollins added Patriot Select is not using AI for their claims decision making process, saying AI serves as an important and efficient tool for insurance companies when used responsibly.
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