What Is on a Flood Insurance Declarations Page?
A flood insurance declarations page is the personalized front section of a flood policy: it identifies the insured and the insured property, states the policy term, and sets out the coverage amounts and deductibles that apply. Under the National Flood Insurance Program, the declarations page is provided to the policyholder and also to the agent and, when the property carries a mortgage, to the lender, as FEMA explains in its flyer on understanding your flood insurance policy declarations. It performs the same role for a flood policy that an ordinary declarations page performs for an auto or homeowners policy.
Why flood has a declarations page of its own
Flood damage is generally not covered by a standard homeowners or renters policy, so flood coverage is written as a separate contract, with its own policy number, its own term, and its own declarations page. A homeowner who insures a property against both fire and flood therefore holds two declarations pages that describe the same building in different terms. The homeowners document maps the dwelling and personal property limits that the Insurance Information Institute describes in its guide to insurance for your house and personal possessions; the flood document describes what the flood policy will pay, under its own limits and deductibles. Neither can be read as a substitute for the other, which is a recurring source of confusion at closing and at claim time.
The fields that distinguish it
The general anatomy will be familiar to anyone who has read a declarations page before — named insured, mailing address, policy number, effective and expiration dates, the insurer, the agent — but several fields are particular to flood.
- The property location. Flood rating depends on the characteristics of a specific building, so the insured location is stated separately from the mailing address and matters more than it does on many other policies.
- Building coverage and contents coverage as separate items. A flood policy can insure the structure, the contents, or both, each with its own limit. A policy showing a building limit and no contents limit covers no personal property, and vice versa.
- Separate deductibles. Because building and contents are separate coverages, the declarations page commonly shows a deductible for each, and the two need not be equal.
- Community and flood-zone identifiers. Flood policies are written in participating communities, and the declarations page carries the identifiers and rating information used to place the property.
- The mortgagee or loss payee. Where a lender requires flood insurance, that lender is named on the declarations page, which is why the lender receives a copy at issuance and renewal.
Reading it alongside the rest of the contract
The declarations page states the facts of your particular policy; the standard policy form that accompanies it states what the words on that page mean and which losses are excluded. The two are read together, and a limit shown on the declarations page is always subject to the conditions and exclusions in the form.
It is also worth noting that federal flood insurance operates under rules that are set and revised through the federal rulemaking process. Changes to federal programs are announced in the Federal Register, the government's official daily journal of rules, proposed rules, and notices, which is the authoritative place to confirm what has formally changed rather than relying on summaries.
A flood declarations page is requested most often by a lender verifying that required coverage is in force. If you need a current copy and do not have one, the routes described in how to get a copy of your declarations page apply here too, with the added option of asking the lender's insurance department, which generally holds a copy of its own. Homeowners and renters comparing their flood document against their property policy may also find our guide to homeowners and renters declarations pages useful for the contrast.