Public Adjuster Fee Caps by State: Why “10% Everywhere” Is a Myth (2026)

Open a public adjuster's contract and look at the fee line. Nine times out of ten it reads 10 percent, because 10 percent is the number the trade repeats to itself and the number homeowners have heard. In Florida, on an ordinary claim with no state of emergency in play, the legal ceiling is double that, at 20 percent.¹ The "10 percent cap" is one of the most durable myths in this business, and it misleads in two directions at once, depending on where the loss happened.

Start with the part that surprises even working adjusters: most states do not cap public adjuster fees by percentage at all. Of the roughly 45 states that license public adjusters, only about 14 write a statutory percentage ceiling into their code.⁷ The rest lean on written-contract and disclosure rules and leave the number to negotiation, so what adjusters actually charge tracks the market rather than a statute. So across most of the country, whatever a signed, disclosed contract says — 10 percent, 15, sometimes more — is the ceiling.

Where legislatures did put a number in the code, the numbers disagree with each other. Texas caps the total commission at a flat 10 percent of the settlement on every claim, storm or no storm.² New York holds public adjusters to 12.5 percent.³ Florida runs a sliding scale that tops out at 20 percent for a normal claim and falls to 10 percent only for claims tied to a declared state of emergency, in the year after the declaration.¹ California writes no statutory percentage at all: the fee is whatever the contract states, provided the policyholder is not left worse off than handling the claim alone.⁴

Statutory public adjuster fee ceilings, selected states (2026)

State	Statutory cap	When it applies	Statute
Texas	10%	Every claim; total commission ceiling	Tex. Ins. Code 4102.104
New York	12.5%	Every claim; up to 20% on a supplemental if the aggregate stays under 12.5%	11 NYCRR 25.7
Florida	20% / 10%	20% ordinary; 10% for a declared-emergency claim within a year of the declaration	Fla. Stat. 626.854(11)
North Carolina	10%	Only during a declared catastrophic incident; no general cap otherwise	N.C. Gen. Stat. 58-33A-60
California	None	Whatever the written contract states; AB 597 would add a 15% disaster cap	Cal. Ins. Code 15027

Where the 10 percent actually comes from

Trace the famous number and it usually leads back to a disaster. Florida's 10 percent applies only to claims arising from a governor-declared emergency, and only for the first year after that declaration; the everyday Florida ceiling stays at 20 percent.¹ A cluster of states — Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, and North Carolina among them — cap fees at 10 percent solely during a declared catastrophe, with no general percentage limit the rest of the year.⁷ North Carolina's statute says so plainly: the 10 percent ceiling attaches to a catastrophic incident declared by the President or the governor, and to nothing in the ordinary course.⁶ So the figure the trade quotes as the universal rule is, across much of the map, the emergency exception rather than the everyday limit.

Check the code, not the rule of thumb

The percentage in the contract has to match the state whose law governs the claim, and the two diverge sharply. Sign a 10 percent agreement on a non-emergency Florida homeowner claim and you have left ten points on the table that the statute would have allowed.¹ Quote a New York client 12.5 percent and then bill 15, and the overage is both unenforceable and grounds for discipline.³ California adjusters carry a moving target of their own: today the fee is contract-driven with no statutory ceiling, but Assembly Bill 597, moving through the 2025-26 legislature, would impose a 15 percent cap on disaster claims and calculate it only on the "new money" recovered after the adjuster is retained, not the full claim.⁵ An adjuster who steps into a partially paid file after a wildfire would watch the billable base shrink to the additional recovery alone.

The fine print under each ceiling matters as much as the headline rate. Florida's percentage comes off the claim payment excluding the deductible, fees on additional-living-expense money require a separate signed acknowledgment, and a reopened or supplemental claim is capped at 20 percent of the supplemental payment rather than the original.¹ A one-line contract that just says "10%" quietly walks past all of it, which is why the number belongs in your standard workflow as a per-state field, not a house default.