Guide to Flood Re
If you live in a flood-risk area, Flood Re helps you find affordable home insurance.
What’s Flood Re?
Flood Re is a scheme which helps provide affordable home insurance cover for UK homes that are in flood risk areas.
Key points
- Flood Re is a scheme that helps make insurance more affordable for homes with a high flood risk
- You buy your home insurance as normal, and your insurer will decide whether to pass on your flood risk cover to Flood Re
- The flood-risk part of your policy is capped, but the overall cost is set by insurers, making it important to shop around
The scheme was set up by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Every insurer in the UK pays into the Flood Re scheme. This money goes into a fund which is used to cover the flood risks in home insurance policies.
How Flood Re works
If you live in a flood-risk area, your insurer can choose to pass the flood risk element on to Flood Re.
This process of passing the risk on to another provider is called re insurance - hence Flood Re.
If you made a valid claim for flooding your insurer would pay out, and Flood Re would reimburse them the cost from the Flood Re fund.
This means your insurance premiums won’t be expensive just because you live in a flood risk area, as the risk is covered by Flood Re.
However, your insurance premiums are still affected by other factors unrelated to flooding, such as local crime rates.
Am I eligible for Flood Re?
Your home's likely to be eligible if:
- It was built before 2009
- It's in a council tax band
- It's used for residential purposes
- You or your family live in the home for some or all the time, or it's unoccupied (so not rented out to someone else)
Try the Flood re eligibility calculator to find out if your home qualifies - but it's up to the individual insurers offering the scheme to decide if they can give you a policy or not.
Exclusions to Flood Re
Homes that were built after 2009 won’t be covered.
Properties let out by landlords including holiday homes you never live in yourself, aren’t eligible for buildings cover with Flood Re, but if you’re a tenant you can request cover for your contents.
Commercial and business properties aren’t covered by Flood Re, but the British Insurance Brokers’ Association created a commercial property flood scheme in 2016.
If you’ve made three claims but haven’t taken measures to waterproof your home, you probably won’t be able to benefit from the scheme.
How Flood Re is funded
All UK insurers pay in to the Flood Re fund.
When Flood Re take on your flood risk property, your insurer is charged a fixed premium.
The premium Flood Re charges your insurer to cover your flood risk is capped based on your home’s council tax band.
In addition to the fund and the premium, your insurer must pay a £250 excess for each policy.
Flood Re collects a tax from the insurance industry of £180m a year and it uses that tax along with some other income to effectively pay the claims on those policies sent to it by insurers relating to floodBrendan McCafferty, the chief executive of Flood Re
Because Flood Re is paying the claim the price charged by insurers to consumers could reduce
What impact will Flood Re have on the overall price of home insurance?
Flood Re should lower prices for those most at risk of flooding, but the costs of funding the scheme was originally estimated by the government to add £10.50 to each combined household insurance policy in the UKs.
“It's not right to say there'll be an exact £10.50 rise on everyone's premium,” said Matt Cullen of the ABI. “It's a tax being levied on the industry and insurers will have to consider how they fund that.”
Flood Re is designed to provide homeowners with more competitive home insurance prices and to help tenants affordably cover their contents for flood risk.
Remember, you don’t have to do anything differently when you get home insurance – it’s up to your insurer and Flood Re to organise.
As for the long term, Flood Re ends in 2039, but it might be continued afterwards if it remains successful.
While the Flood Re scheme helps keep the extra insurance costs associated with flood risk down, it’s still worth comparing a range of policies to find cover that suits your needs and budget.
Which insurance companies cover Flood Re?
In June 2021, these insurers were offering the Flood Re scheme – but it's up to them to decide if they can offer you a Flood Re policy:
- Admiral
- Ageas
- AIG
- Allianz
- Avantia (HomeProtect)
- Aviva Home Insurance
- AXA
- Bank of Scotland
- Barclays
- British Gas
- Chelsea Building Society
- Cherish Insurance Services
- Churchill
- Clydesdale Bank
- Covéa Insurance
- Direct Line
- Esure
- First Direct Home Insurance
- Flood Assist
- Halifax
- Haven Insurance
- Hiscox Home Insurance
- HSBC Home Insurance
- inet3
- John Lewis Specialist Home Insurance – underwritten by Covéa Insurance
- Leek United Building Society
- Legal & General
- Lloyd & Whyte
- LV=
- Lloyds Bank
- Marks & Spencer Bank
- More Than
- Nationwide
- Natwest – underwritten by UK Insurance Limited
- NFU Mutual
- Norwich & Peterborough Building Society
- Nottingham Building Society
- Oak Underwriting
- Ocaso
- Pen Underwriting
- Policy Expert
- Plum Underwriting
- Privilege
- RBS – underwritten by UK Insurance Limited
- Sainsbury’s Bank
- Santander Home Insurance – administered and underwritten by Aviva Insurance Limited
- Sheilas’ Wheels
- Swiftcover
- The West Brom
- Yorkshire Bank
- Yorkshire Building Society
- Zurich
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