In the land of the stars and stripes, a shadowy exclusion, like a raven’s wing, looms ominously over those who’ve endured the wrath of hurricanes, especially in the wake of the cruel Katrina and Rita of 2005. The National Flood Insurance Program, that guardian against the watery abyss, claims that a staggering 90% of the nation’s natural disasters involve the relentless deluge of floods. Yet, despite the torrents of tragedy, only a paltry fraction of Americans find solace in the embrace of flood insurance. At the grand federal stage, merely 27% of households shroud themselves in the protective cloak of this perilous risk.
Once, those seeking shelter from the storm could turn to insurers or the federal National Flood Insurance Program fund, a sanctuary from the tempest. But, in the year of 2019, regulators, like spectral phantoms, decreed a change, commanding the regulated financial institutions to welcome private flood insurance policies akin to the ancient NFID.
“Beware the flood’s remorseless surge, its wrath a tempest to diverge,
Edgar A. Perry
Insure thyself ‘gainst nature’s spite, or rue the deluge’s dreadful night.“
In these latter days, the keepers of risk, the insurers, have grown bolder in their attempts to fathom the abyss. Firms of prediction have sharpened their senses, casting their lots into the murky waters to decipher the whims of the flood. As a result, a growing number of companies now extend their protective wings over the tempest-tossed souls. These companies offer more than the meager provisions of FEMA’s NFIP policies, those limits fixed at a mere $250,000 for homes and $500,000 for stately edifices. In the year of 2020, a congregation of 58 private companies took on the mantle of flood guardians. This gathering of protectors numbered only 41 in the preceding year, a sign of the shifting tides.
Yet, when disaster descends like the raven’s dark wings, the lion’s share of losses still falls upon the shoulders of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and the ancient NFIP program. In the land of uncertainty, they remain as steadfast beacons in the gathering storm.
Premium insurance pricing
In that vast mercantile realm, which bears the stars and stripes, the grand doctrine of contractual liberty holds dominion, bestowing upon insurers a freedom as boundless as the firmament to set their golden premiums. This privilege, this unchecked reign, hath woven a tapestry of inequity among those bound by policy – with many a soul ensnared in the web of denial or burdened with premiums as towering and steep as the mountains of the moon.
In regions where risk doth skulk and lurk in every shadow, the cost of shelter from nature’s fury hath soared skyward without cease, much like the gothic spires of a haunted manor reaching into the storm.
Insure in haste, lest floods do waste; for he who scorns the rising tide, may find his refuge denied.
Edgar A. Perry
Yet, in the year of our Lord 2021, the guardians of the FEMA, those stewards of the National Flood Insurance Program, sought to unravel and reform the arcane alchemy of their rate-crafting. Their noble intent: to forge a tool by which the policyholder might steer their course more wisely through the tempestuous sea of choices, and gird themselves with foresight’s armor against disaster’s cruel whims.
With this new sorcery of assessment, there comes a distribution of premiums more equitable than yesteryear’s, considerate of each dwelling’s worth and the peculiar perils it faces from the ravenous maw of the flood. Behold, the new oracles of risk draw upon a tapestry of variables vast and varied.
These harbingers of financial fate divine the frequency of inundation, the disparate natures of deluge – be it the raging river’s spate, the tempest’s surge, the gnawing of coastal shores, or the heavens’ own tears. They gaze also upon the proximity of each abode to the life-giving yet treacherous waters, and the unique visage of the property itself: its flesh of construction, its bones of cost.
Thus, with a system enriched by such manifold strands of knowledge, may each bearer of policy navigate the waters of uncertainty with a keener eye and a heart better steeled against the inscrutable future.
