Flood Insurance Program

With flood waters inundating so many in the Mississippi River Valley and with spillways being opened to try and midigate the damage further downstream, we turn today to the size of the United State’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The program was designed to provide a shared pool of resources that could help and reduce the high cost of disaster assistance resulting from flooding along the national waterways.

NFIP is not only an insurance program but a floodplain management and mapping program. Participation is NFIP is voluntary at the community level, with a couple of exceptions. One is for properties in officially designated flood plains on which a mortgage is held. Banks require the purchase of flood insurance for suchproperties on which they hold the mortgage. Another exception to the voluntary nature of this program is the fact that those who receive financial assistance from the federal government following a Presidential declaration of disaster may then be required to purchase flood insurance through NFIP.

Today’s market size is the total amount paid in premiums to the NFIP in 1990 and 2010 as well as the number of policies in force in those years.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 1990 and 2010
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