The Flood History Information Act of 2026 directs the Administrator of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to create a data exchange that discloses specified policy and claims information to private insurance companies that sign a data sharing agreement, and to provide property-level flood claim histories to purchasers, lessees, and current owners on request. The bill sets minimum contractual limits on how shared data may be used, treats certain disclosures as a routine use under the Privacy Act, and allows the Administrator to charge fees for insurer access with proceeds deposited to the National Flood Insurance Fund.
This is a structural change to how federal flood-loss data will flow into private markets and real-estate transactions. It creates operational obligations for insurers and new transparency for buyers while raising implementation questions around privacy, data quality, administrative capacity, and potential market effects on pricing and property values.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires the NFIP to disclose specific claims and policy fields — including property location (address plus latitude/longitude), coverage amounts, dates of loss, claim payments, and other Administrator‑determined items — to insurers that enter into a prescribed data sharing agreement. It also requires the NFIP to provide, on request, the number and dollar value of claims for a property and whether mandatory purchase requirements may apply due to prior federal disaster assistance.
Who It Affects
Private insurers that meet the Flood Disaster Protection Act definition of an 'insurance company' and that sign data agreements; prospective purchasers, lessees, and current owners requesting property flood histories; mortgage lenders, real-estate professionals, and the NFIP’s administrative unit. Analytics vendors and reinsurers that rely on NFIP data will also be affected indirectly.
Why It Matters
By feeding NFIP claim history into private underwriting and disclosures, the bill could materially change risk assessment and premiums for properties with prior flood losses and improve transparency for buyers. At the same time, it creates new privacy and operational obligations and could accelerate private-market pricing differentiation in ways that affect housing affordability and mortgage underwriting.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill creates two separate but related information flows. First, it authorizes a formal ‘‘data exchange’’ allowing the NFIP to disclose detailed policy and claims fields to private insurers that sign an agreement.
Those insurers must accept contractual limits on use, share back their own NFIP-formatted policy and claims data to the Administrator, and will — subject to Administrator-set terms — pay a fee that the NFIP deposits into its fund. Second, the bill requires the NFIP to respond to requests from a purchaser, lessee, or current owner by providing a property’s flood-claim count and aggregate dollar values, cause-of-loss factors as known to the NFIP, and whether prior federal disaster assistance creates a mandatory-purchase obligation.
Operationally, the data sharing agreement is the control point: the Administrator decides the terms for permitted uses (the text mandates underwriting, rate-setting, and claims adjustment only and forbids marketing), data handling, and insurer reporting back to the NFIP. The statute also gives the Administrator discretion to include additional fields beyond the enumerated list if deemed necessary.
The bill explicitly treats these disclosures as a ‘‘routine use’’ under the Privacy Act, which changes the legal footing for sharing records in the federal system but does not eliminate other privacy and accuracy duties.For insurers and market participants, the immediate effects will be technical and procedural: mapping NFIP records to internal systems, building secure transfer and storage pipelines, updating underwriting models to ingest historical NFIP loss data, and complying with the agreement’s use restrictions. For real-estate transactions, buyers and lessees gain access to federal records they previously could not obtain easily — which can influence purchase decisions, loan conditions, and insurance placement.
The Administrator’s fee authority is limited to insurers (purchasers receive disclosures free), and fee revenue goes to the National Flood Insurance Fund to support program costs.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Administrator must require insurers who receive NFIP data to provide their own policy and claims data back to the NFIP in a format the Administrator prescribes.
The statutory list of shareable fields explicitly includes property latitude and longitude in addition to street address.
The bill declares disclosures under the new authority a ‘‘routine use’’ for Privacy Act purposes, altering the standard for sharing system-of-records information.
The Administrator may charge participating insurers a fee to access the data, and must deposit collected fees into the National Flood Insurance Fund; requesters who are purchasers, lessees, or current owners are not charged.
The data sharing agreement must prohibit insurers from using NFIP-provided information for marketing and limit permitted uses to underwriting, premium-rate setting, and claims adjustment.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Creates separate ‘‘Availability’’ and ‘‘Data Exchange’’ duties
The amendment splits the existing statutory language to add an express data-exchange subsection while leaving the Administrator’s existing availability duties intact. That separation clarifies that the new information-sharing functions are discretionary statutory duties performed under a new procedural framework rather than mere administrative practice—so the Administrator must follow the agreement and fee mechanics set out in the new subsections when sharing data with private insurers.
Data sharing agreement: eligibility, permitted uses, and reciprocal reporting
This provision makes insurer access contingent on a written data sharing agreement. The bill limits how insurers may use NFIP data—only for underwriting, pricing, and claims work—and forbids marketing use. It also requires insurers to return their policy and claims data in an NFIP-prescribed format, creating a reciprocal exchange that can expand the NFIP’s dataset but also imposes a technical reporting burden on carriers. The Administrator retains discretion to add other agreement terms the agency deems necessary.
Enumerated data fields and Administrator discretion
The statute lists core fields the NFIP will disclose (address and coordinates, coverage amounts, loss dates, payments) but also authorizes the Administrator to include additional claims and policy information. That mix creates predictable baseline data for users while preserving flexibility for the NFIP to add fields over time—important for evolving analytics but also raising questions about scope creep and notice to covered parties.
Property-level disclosure to purchasers, lessees, and owners
This section requires the NFIP to provide on-request summaries tied to a specific property: number and dollar value of claims, cause-of-loss factors as known, and whether prior federal disaster assistance triggers mandatory-purchase requirements. The provision gives consumers and real-estate actors a federal source for flood-history facts but doesn’t prescribe format, timing, or appeal mechanisms for disputed or incomplete records.
Privacy treatment and fee mechanics
The bill designates the authorized disclosures as a ‘‘routine use’’ under the Privacy Act, which permits release from a system of records but still requires agency administration of notice and recordkeeping. It also authorizes charging insurers a fee to participate in the exchange and requires depositing those fees into the National Flood Insurance Fund; purchasers and lessees receive disclosures without charge.
Definitions and statutory cross-references
The definitions tie key terms to existing statutory language—most notably importing the Flood Disaster Protection Act’s definition of an insurance company. That cross-reference narrows the universe of eligible private carriers to those already recognized under federal flood statute, but it also creates dependence on external statutory definitions that could complicate inclusion of novel market participants or third-party data vendors.
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Who Benefits
- Private flood insurers and underwriters — gain access to historical NFIP claims data (including precise location coordinates), improving loss models, segmentation, and rate accuracy.
- Prospective property purchasers, lessees, and current owners — receive federal-level flood-claim histories and mandatory-purchase flags that reduce information asymmetry in transactions.
- The National Flood Insurance Fund — benefits from fee revenue from participating insurers, which the statute directs to be deposited into the fund.
- Mortgage lenders and servicers — obtain clearer evidence of property loss history and mandatory-purchase status, which can streamline loan underwriting and compliance with flood insurance requirements.
Who Bears the Cost
- Participating private insurers — face technical and compliance costs to sign agreements, receive and secure NFIP data, update models, and return required data in the Administrator’s format.
- The NFIP/Administrator — must build and operate secure data-sharing infrastructure, negotiate agreements, and manage disclosure requests; the fee authority offsets some but not necessarily all upfront administrative costs.
- Property owners — face privacy exposure as historical loss and location data become more widely accessible; those with prior claims may experience higher premiums or resale difficulty.
- Real-estate professionals and local governments — may absorb transaction friction as buyers request federal flood histories and as disclosures influence negotiations and permitting practices.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is straightforward: the bill improves transparency and actuarial realism by moving NFIP historical loss data into underwriting and home‑purchase decisions, but that same transparency can erode privacy, accelerate price segmentation, and create administrative burdens—especially for smaller carriers and the NFIP itself—without clear, legislated safeguards for accuracy, correction, and enforcement.
The bill creates an attractive policy trade: better information for insurers and buyers versus heightened privacy risks and new compliance complexity. Treating disclosures as a ‘‘routine use’’ under the Privacy Act lowers the statutory barrier to sharing system-of-records information, but it does not resolve downstream accuracy, redress, or liability questions.
If NFIP records contain errors in property identification or payments, buyers and insurers may react to faulty signals unless the statute — or subsequent rulemaking — builds clear correction and challenge pathways.
Operationally, reciprocal reporting (insurers must send data back to the NFIP) will improve the central data store but requires significant investment in data standards, mapping, and cybersecurity. The Administrator’s broad discretion to add ‘‘any other’’ fields or terms could expand the program’s scope without legislative oversight, increasing the risk that sensitive or granular data powers aggressive price differentiation.
Finally, the bill forbids marketing use but leaves enforcement mechanisms unspecified; absent strong audit, sanctions, or statutory private rights, misuse or function creep is a real possibility.
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