Updates on the December 2018 Government Shutdown

In today's episode, we'll talk about the updates on the federal government shutdown this 2018 and answer your questions on what can happen during this time. Will it impact you when buying a house? Can I make changes to my flood insurance policy? So, let's talk about them.

Coverage Changes

Making changes to existing flood insurance is still available if you're doing a National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) policy under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). However, if you're planning to do an increase in your coverage, then this won't be available. Let's say that your business is under the National Flood Insurance Program and you want to cover more of the property and contents, well you might want to put this off since this won't really be approved during the shutdown. This shutdown actually affects and blocks any changes in flood insurance premiums.

Policy Transfer & Policy Assumption

Another common question is if you can do a policy transfer or policy assumption during this shutdown. This is most likely the case for homeowners who are looking to sell their house or new homebuyers looking to buy a previously-owner property or house. The answer to this is yes, you can do this since there's already an existing National Flood Insurance Program policy in place. So, as long as you're not doing any increase in flood insurance coverage or something that's going to have an impact on the premium rates, you can transfer the policy from National Flood Insurance Program.

Flood Insurance Purchase

Lastly, people always ask if they can get flood insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) during this time? Yes, this is still possible however you won't be able to purchase flood insurance from FEMA or the National Flood Insurance Program if it's after December 21st or until the government shutdown is over. It's important to make sure that the policy from the National Flood Insurance Program releases before December 21st or it won't take effect on your house until the shutdown is over. This date will be the same for all renewal policies over at FEMA.

This is one of the things why it's important to keep your options when it comes to the flood insurance market open. A lot of clients are now moving into private flood insurance since they generally won't be affected by this shutdown. Private market flood insurance is going to be provided by private insurers which won't really be looking into the current shutdown that's happening.

This is why we would encourage consumers to make a decision when moving into the private market flood or private flood insurance if they want to get immediate coverage against the risk of flood. Private flood insurance can provide the same coverage and more for shorter processing. We also recommend this for business owners or homeowners with an expensive house since they don't max out at a specific price when it comes to coverages.

So, if you have questions on how to get into private flood insurance, how this shutdown will impact you, or anything at all about flood, please feel free to reach out to us or watch more of our daily flood education videos over at our YouTube channel by clicking the links below.