By Isha Marathe

May 7 - (The Insurer) - Florida-based carrier Heritage Insurance Holdings has reported a 9.5 percentage point improvement in its combined ratio to 84.5% and a 0.2% decrease in gross premiums written to $356.0 million in the first quarter.

Heritage reported an operating income of $42.43 million in Q1 2025, compared to $22.7 million in Q1 2024.

Gross premiums earned went up by 3.6% to $353.8 million for the first quarter of 2025. Net premiums earned increased 11.5% to $200.0 million.

Earnings per share of $0.99 in the quarter were up form $0.47 in the prior-year period.

The loss ratio dropped by 7.2 percentage points to 49.7% in the quarter.

Heritage CEO Ernie Garateix said the improvement came from managing exposure, obtaining rate adequacy and diversifying the company's business over the last few years.

"(The) positive impact of actions taken by the Florida legislature to curtail claims abuse has improved our outlook on the Florida market," he said.

"As such, we are gradually opening more territories to write new personal lines business and offer needed products to our customer base. As territories are opened, we expect to increase the pace of production growth."