The Flood Re Scheme Explained: What It Means for Your Flood Insurance Claim

If your home is in a flood-risk area, you may already be covered by Flood Re, a joint scheme between the government and the insurance industry designed to keep flood cover affordable. Here’s what it actually covers, who’s excluded, and what it means if you need to make a claim.

What is the Flood Re scheme?

Flood Re is a reinsurance scheme that’s been running since April 2016. Rather than each insurer pricing flood cover individually based on an individual property’s risk, participating insurers can pass the flood risk element of a policy into a central Flood Re fund, funded by a levy on insurers, which allows them to offer affordable premiums and excesses to homeowners in flood-risk areas.

In practice, this usually isn’t something you apply for directly, if your insurer participates in the scheme, they handle the Flood Re arrangement behind the scenes when you take out or renew your buildings and contents insurance.

Who is and isn’t covered?

Flood Re is designed for individual homeowners; not every property is eligible. Exclusions typically include:

• Homes built after 2009, to avoid encouraging new building in flood-risk areas
• Properties in the highest council tax band (Band H in England, or the equivalent in Scotland and Wales)
• Buy-to-let and commercial properties
• Some leasehold arrangements, depending on the structure of the lease

If you fall into one of these excluded groups, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t get flood cover, but it does mean your premium is priced on your property’s actual flood risk rather than the capped rate Flood Re allows, and it’s worth shopping around with insurers who specialise in higher flood-risk properties.

What this means if you’re making a flood claim

Flood Re affects how your premium is priced, it doesn’t change how a claim itself is handled once you’ve had a flood. If your insurer’s offer doesn’t reflect the true cost of putting your home back together, being covered under Flood Re doesn’t change your right to challenge that, as loss assessors we work for you, the policyholder, not the scheme or the insurer.

If you’re dealing with a flood claim and want a second opinion on whether the settlement being offered is fair, whether or not your property falls under Flood Re, get in touch with our flood claims team before accepting anything.

For help with your insurance claim, get in touch with us by calling 01273 573888, or by emailing office@insuranceclaimsolutions.co.uk.