A.G. Gancarski
Gov. Ron DeSantis is happy with his automobile insurance.
After the State of the State address, DeSantis said the state of his car coverage from USAA couldn’t be better.
Noting that he talked to “some of the guys” from the company at last year’s Army-Navy Football Game, DeSantis said that he and First Lady Casey DeSantis had been “USAA members for a long time.”
“The First lady lost a car years ago in a storm. We literally put in the claim. Some guy shows up 48 hours later and just cuts us a check and I’d never seen anything like it and I always remind them,” DeSantis said. “I was like, ‘I’ll be a customer for life because you guys didn’t play games.’ So I have confidence in USAA just as a veteran and having done that.”
In addition to giving his own insurance company a vote of confidence, DeSantis also discussed car coverage rates writ large.
He noted they went up “20-22% in 2024,” which he said USAA told him was because of the cost of car parts these days.
“Basically they said, ‘Well, cars are more like computers now. Used to be you have a car, you know how to fix a bumper. Now there’s sensors, there’s all these things,'” DeSantis recounted. “And so when there’s accidents, the cost of fixing that just gets higher and so it drives rates up. Then you have overall inflation.”
Additionally, DeSantis suggested Floridians’ behavior behind the wheel were also a factor driving up premiums.
“We have challenges with how the culture of driving is. I was telling people when we had the snowstorm. Now, North Florida may be a little bit better than South Florida for driving, but I was afraid everyone’s going to be peeling out on this ice and stuff. And we were plowing it. And I think it ended up working out okay. But you have that situation,” DeSantis said.
In spite of bad driving in the state, DeSantis noted that some auto insurers have lowered their rates.
He credits that to “litigation reform and legal reform” that have brought “more stability, more predictability” to a once troubled market.
One comment
PeterH
March 4, 2025 at 2:15 pm
USAA is a terrific resource to those in the military or retired ranks and I think some level of service is available to non-military. I’ve enjoyed banking and limited investments with USAA for three decades.