Written and reviewed by Cory Cannon, Esq.
Published Updated
If Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Company denied, underpaid, or delayed your property claim, Florida law gives you specific, enforceable rights on a fixed clock. Heritage was required to acknowledge your claim within 7 days, conduct any physical inspection within 30 days after receiving the proof of loss, and pay or deny the claim within 60 days under Fla. Stat. § 627.70131, subject to narrow statutory exceptions. Current law requires original or reopened notice within 1 year after the date of loss and supplemental notice within 18 months after the date of loss under Fla. Stat. § 627.70132, and you have 5 years from the date of loss to file suit on the policy under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(2)(e). Before any lawsuit, Fla. Stat. § 627.70152 requires a pre-suit notice of intent to litigate, served through the Florida Department of Financial Services (DFS), a step that frequently produces a re-inspection or a revised offer before anyone sees a courtroom.
Cory Cannon represents Heritage policyholders across Tampa Bay, and the initial review of a denial letter, estimate, and policy is free. Some matters may be accepted on contingency. Under a contingency agreement, no recovery means no attorney’s fee. We may advance case costs. In certain circumstances, you may be responsible for case costs under your written agreement or the opposing party’s attorney’s fees or costs under applicable law, even without a recovery. I read the repair estimate line by line and compare its scope and pricing against the available repair evidence. This page explains Heritage, the deadlines that may control a claim, and how a dispute moves from review to resolution. If your claim was denied, underpaid, or stalled past its statutory deadlines, the sections below map your options.
Findings Summary
- Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Company is an active Florida insurer headquartered in Tampa and a subsidiary of publicly traded Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: HRTG).
- Per the company’s fiscal-year 2025 annual report (SEC Form 10-K), the Heritage group had 357,275 policies in force and roughly $1.4 billion in annualized premium as of December 31, 2025.
- Heritage claims are reported by phone at 855-415-7120 (24/7); claims representatives answer at 855-536-2744. Claim status runs through your assigned adjuster.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.70131: acknowledge within 7 days, conduct any physical inspection within 30 days after receipt of proof-of-loss statements, pay or deny within 60 days.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.70132: 1 year from the date of loss for original or reopened notice, 18 months after the date of loss for supplemental notice. Fla. Stat. § 95.11(2)(e): 5 years from the date of loss to file suit.
- Every § 627.70152 pre-suit notice filed against Heritage is a public record, searchable by company name in the DFS PIITIL database.
- In May 2024, Heritage agreed in a Florida Office of Insurance Regulation consent order to pay a $1 million fine plus $10,000 in costs over its Hurricane Ian claim handling, following a targeted market conduct examination (consent order, May 9, 2024; Insurance Journal, May 13, 2024).
- Heritage’s Hurricane Ian claim handling was also the subject of a September 2024 CBS 60 Minutes report and a DFS investigation. Heritage denies the allegations; Insurance Journal (October 2025) and Claims Journal (January 2026) reported that the investigation is inactive.
Who Is Heritage Property & Casualty?
Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Company is a Florida-domiciled insurer organized in 2012 and headquartered at 1401 N. Westshore Boulevard in Tampa. It is a subsidiary of Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc., which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker HRTG and, through its insurance subsidiaries, writes personal and commercial residential coverage in 16 states. According to the holding company’s annual report for fiscal year 2025, the group carried 357,275 policies in force and about $1.4 billion in annualized premium as of December 31, 2025, with the large majority in personal residential lines.
Heritage is not a struggling carrier winding down its book. The holding company reported operating income of $267.2 million for 2025, Heritage resumed writing new Florida personal residential business in 2024, and the company announced in December 2025 that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) had approved a rate decrease averaging 3.3 percent for Florida policyholders, effective February 18, 2026. That matters for one practical reason: a dispute with Heritage is almost never about whether the company can pay. It is about what the company has decided your loss is worth, and that decision can be tested, item by item, under Florida law.
What Do Public Records Show About Heritage Claim Disputes?
Florida gives you two public databases that show, in raw numbers, how often policyholders end up in formal disputes with any carrier, including Heritage.
The first is the DFS Property Insurance Intent to Initiate Litigation database, called PIITIL. Since Fla. Stat. § 627.70152 took effect in 2021, every policyholder who intends to sue a residential or commercial property insurer must first file a notice through this system, and every notice is a public record. Search the company name exactly as it appears on your declarations page, “Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Company,” and you can review each pre-suit dispute filed against the carrier, including the type of disagreement (denial, underpayment, delay) and the amounts in controversy. The second is the DFS Civil Remedy Notice database, where policyholders alleging statutory violations under Fla. Stat. § 624.155 must file before pursuing a bad-faith remedy. Both databases are free, and our carrier claims hub explains how to run these lookups for any Florida insurer.
The public record also includes a completed regulatory action. In May 2024, Heritage entered a consent order with OIR, agreeing to pay a $1 million fine plus $10,000 in costs after a targeted market conduct examination of a sample of its Hurricane Ian claims. The examination report, completed in March 2024, cited violations of the claim-handling laws then in effect, including failures to promptly acknowledge claim communications, failures to pay or deny claims within the then-applicable 90-day deadline, incomplete claim records, and adjusters who did not give policyholders required identification and license information. Insurance Journal and WUSF reported the order in May 2024.
A separate controversy remains unadjudicated. In September 2024, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired a report in which independent field adjusters alleged that damage estimates they prepared on Hurricane Ian claims handled by Heritage were substantially reduced before policyholders were paid, in one reported instance by more than 90 percent, with the field adjuster’s name left on the revised report. Heritage denies the allegations: its chief executive called them “flat wrong,” and the company says desk review of field estimates is routine industry practice and that desk adjusters’ names were inadvertently omitted from certain revised reports. DFS opened an investigation, which Insurance Journal (October 2025) and Claims Journal (January 2026) reported as inactive; two Southwest Florida homeowners have since sued DFS in Leon County Circuit Court seeking the investigation records. These allegations have not been adjudicated: no court or regulator has found wrongdoing by Heritage arising from the 60 Minutes report, and none of it predicts how Heritage will handle your claim. We summarize it because policyholders ask, and because it underlines a neutral point: the estimate an insurer sends you is a position, not a verdict, and you are entitled to test it.
How Do You File a Claim With Heritage?
Heritage takes new claims by phone at 855-415-7120, staffed 24 hours a day, with an option to continue by text and send photos or video. General claims questions go to 855-536-2744, and status updates run through the adjuster assigned to your file; details are on the Heritage claims center page. When you report, get the claim number in writing and note the date: the statutory clocks under § 627.70131 start running from notice.
Document before anyone touches the damage. Photograph and video every affected area, keep damaged materials where practical, and save receipts for tarps, water extraction, and other emergency mitigation, which your policy requires and Heritage must consider. Two early requests deserve caution rather than reflex: if Heritage asks for a recorded statement, understand what a recorded statement can be used for before giving one, and if it sends a sworn proof of loss form, read our plain-English explanation of what a sworn proof of loss is: it is a signed, notarized statement of your claim, and errors in it follow you through the entire dispute.
What Deadlines Control a Heritage Claim?
Two clocks run against you, and one runs against Heritage.
| Statute | Deadline | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
| Fla. Stat. § 627.70132 | 1 year from date of loss | Notice of a new or reopened claim to Heritage |
| Fla. Stat. § 627.70132 | 18 months from date of loss | Notice of a supplemental claim (additional loss or damage from the same peril previously adjusted, or costs incurred completing repairs or replacement under an open, timely noticed claim) |
| Fla. Stat. § 95.11(2)(e) | 5 years from date of loss | Filing suit for breach of the insurance contract |
| Fla. Stat. § 627.70131 | 7 / 30 / 60 days | Heritage’s duties: acknowledge, inspect, then pay or deny |
A worked example. Hurricane Milton made landfall on October 9, 2024. For a Milton loss, the initial notice window closed on October 9, 2025, and the supplemental window closed on April 9, 2026. Both have now passed. But if you reported your Milton claim on time and Heritage denied or underpaid it, you may still file suit until October 9, 2029. The same arithmetic applies to Hurricane Helene losses from September 26, 2024. Run your own dates through our insurance claim deadline calculator, and if Heritage has gone quiet, check its statutory obligations against our insurer response timeline checker. Hurricane losses carry their own complications (percentage deductibles, wind-versus-water fights, matching disputes), which our hurricane damage claim page covers in depth.
Heritage Denied Your Claim: What Now?
A denial letter must state the grounds, and the grounds define the counterattack. Common denial rationales across carriers include wear and tear or deterioration rather than a covered peril, pre-existing damage, late notice, constant-or-repeated seepage exclusions on water losses, and earth movement or settlement exclusions. Each has a factual answer: weather data tied to your date of loss, prior inspection records, photographs, and, where causation is genuinely contested, an opinion from an independent licensed engineer we retain. Under Florida law, the policyholder shows a direct physical loss during the policy period; the burden then shifts to the insurer to prove an exclusion applies.
A denial is Heritage’s position, stated once. It is not final, and challenging it does not require filing a lawsuit on day one. Start with our guide on what to do after a homeowners claim denial in Florida, then have the denial letter reviewed. Our denied claim practice page explains the full escalation path.
Heritage Underpaid or Delayed: What Now?
Underpayment is quieter than denial and more common. The estimate arrives, the number is a fraction of any real contractor’s bid, and the letter reads as if the matter is closed. It is not. We compare Heritage’s estimate line by line against current licensed-contractor pricing in your county: omitted trades, understated quantities, missing code-upgrade costs, and partial-repair assumptions that violate Florida’s matching statute, Fla. Stat. § 626.9744, which requires reasonably uniform replacement when repaired items cannot match undamaged adjacent ones. If Heritage paid actual cash value when your policy promises replacement cost, Fla. Stat. § 627.7011 governs what it owes and when the holdback must be released. Our underpaid claim page covers underpayments in detail.
Delay has its own statute. If Heritage misses the 60-day pay-or-deny deadline, interest runs on what it should have paid, and the missed deadlines become evidence. Document every unreturned call and every re-request for documents already sent, then see our delayed claim page for the escalation sequence. Where an insurer’s conduct goes beyond a coverage disagreement, Florida recognizes a statutory bad-faith remedy under § 624.155, but § 624.1551 requires an adverse adjudication against the insurer first, so the contract claim comes first and the bad faith claim follows it.
How a Heritage Dispute Moves Forward
- Supplemental claim, if the window is open. We promptly report additional damage from the same peril on a claim Heritage already adjusted, within 18 months after the date of loss under § 627.70132.
- Pre-suit notice. We serve the § 627.70152 notice of intent to litigate through the DFS portal, with our documented demand attached. Heritage must respond in writing within 10 business days (by making a settlement offer, demanding appraisal or other alternative dispute resolution, asserting a right to reinspect, or accepting or continuing to deny coverage), and that response is often where the claim moves.
- Appraisal, where it fits. If coverage is admitted and only the amount is disputed, the policy’s appraisal clause can resolve valuation without a lawsuit. Our insurance appraisal page explains when it helps and when it does not.
- Suit. If pre-suit resolution fails, we file within the § 95.11(2)(e) window and litigate the breach-of-contract claim, preserving any bad-faith remedy for after an adverse adjudication.
What Does It Cost to Fight Heritage?
Fee arrangements depend on the matter. Some Heritage disputes may be accepted on a contingency basis. Under a contingency agreement, no recovery means no attorney’s fee. We may advance case costs. In certain circumstances, you may be responsible for case costs under your written agreement or the opposing party’s attorney’s fees or costs under applicable law, even without a recovery. The written agreement states the terms before any work begins.
Since Florida repealed one-way attorney fee shifting for property insurance suits, fee recovery in litigation runs primarily through proposals for settlement under Fla. Stat. § 768.79: a properly served offer that the other side unreasonably rejects can shift fees and costs. For a fuller breakdown, see what a property insurance lawyer costs in Florida.
Why Cory Cannon for a Heritage Dispute?
Heritage is headquartered in Tampa. Tampa Bay is our home market too. Cory Cannon is a Tampa Bay firm built for property insurance and construction disputes, and I am a Florida attorney with a family history in construction for generations. That upbringing is why I read a carrier’s estimate the way a builder reads a scope: trade by trade, line by line, against what licensed local contractors actually charge to put a Florida home back together. We do not guess at whether a number is low. We check it.
One boundary note. If your damage traces to defective construction (a roof that leaked because it was installed wrong, stucco cracking from bad workmanship, windows that never sealed), your real claim may run against the contractor or builder rather than Heritage, and insurers frequently deny claims on exactly that basis. Those disputes follow a different statute and playbook, which our construction defects practice handles. We evaluate both angles in the same free review.
If Heritage denied, underpaid, or delayed your claim, send us the denial letter or estimate and your policy. The review is free, the deadlines are running, and the earlier the file is documented, the more options stay open. Request your free Heritage claim review.