Commissioner of Insurance State of Louisiana Jim Donelon
Louisiana residents are facing or have already received significant increases in their premiums to be protected by the National Flood Insurance Program. State Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon, whose office has no control over the FEMA NFIP, says that the agency’s new Risk Rating 2.0 program proposes to alter premiums as to make them unaffordable to many. According to Donelon, “the rate increases for flood coverage will be so large, tenfold in thousands of cases, that it will become price prohibitive.”
He says in some instances it may be wise to shop around for private flood insurance, instead of that offered by FEMA.
Donelon says many of those who live in flood-prone areas in coastal sections of the state do so because of their various livelihoods in order to make a living. He says those jobs “require a large percentage of our state’s population to live in close proximity to the ports, uh to the coast.”
Donelon says one of the problems with Risk Rating 2.0 is that those who purchased properties that may have had fairly low NFIP premiums may be facing significant premium increases without the so-called grandfathering of rates. As with the old rating system, “that grandfathering stayed with the property, not with the ownership of it. That is being done away with,” said Donelon.
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