Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund Reimbursement Calculator

How this calculator works

The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF) is a state-mandated reinsurance pool established by the Florida legislature under F.S. § 215.555 and administered by the State Board of Administration (SBA). Every admitted Florida residential property insurer — including Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, every Heritage and Universal and Florida Peninsula filed admitted insurer, and every depopulation take-out carrier — is statutorily required to enter into an annual FHCF reimbursement contract and pay a reimbursement-contract premium under F.S. § 215.555(2)(a)4. In exchange, the FHCF reimburses a fixed percentage of each insurer's losses from each named hurricane, above a per-event retention set annually by the SBA under F.S. § 215.555(4)(b).

Three structural features matter:

1. Layered reimbursement. The annual reimbursement contract offers three layers — the 90% layer (the original SB 2-A 2008 layer, available to all participants), the 75% layer (a moderate-insurer election), and the 45% layer (a smaller-insurer election). The elected layer applies to all covered events in the contract year. Most major Florida residential insurers and Citizens elect the 90% layer.
2. Per-event retention. The per-insurer retention is applied separately to each named hurricane, not once per season. A two-event season (Helene plus Milton in 2024) costs the insurer two retentions; a one-event season (Ian in 2022) costs one retention. The retention is essentially the FHCF deductible.
3. Bond-funded program capacity. The FHCF's annual program capacity is funded by SBA-issued bonds and pre-event liquidity instruments; for the 2025-2026 contract year program capacity is approximately $17B industry-wide. If aggregate eligible reimbursements would exceed capacity, F.S. § 215.555(4)(c) pro-rates reimbursements across all participating insurers.

This calculator computes the per-event FHCF reimbursement for an insurer profile (residential losses, retention, elected layer), the aggregate season reimbursement across multiple events, the percentage of total loss reimbursed by the FHCF, the insurer's net retained loss, and the downstream consumer-premium contribution of the FHCF — the typical published estimate that 5%-15% of your windstorm premium is attributable to the FHCF's existence, scaled by the insurer's layer election.

A worked example — $1.5B loss, $200M retention, 90% layer

Take a mid-sized Florida residential insurer with $1.5B of residential losses from a single covered event (a Cat-3 strike along the Tampa Bay coast, say), a $200M per-event retention under F.S. § 215.555(4)(b), and a 90% reimbursement layer elected in its current FHCF annual contract.

Per-event reimbursement math. The loss above retention is $1,500M minus $200M, or $1,300M. The 90% layer reimburses 90 percent of that figure: $1,300M times 0.90, or $1.17B. The insurer's net retained loss for the event is $1.5B minus $1.17B, or $330M — funded from the insurer's own policyholder surplus plus its private catastrophe reinsurance tower above the FHCF layer.

Aggregate season math, one event. With a single event, aggregate season reimbursement equals per-event reimbursement: $1.17B. The insurer's net retained loss for the season is $330M. The percentage of total loss reimbursed by the FHCF is $1.17B divided by $1.5B, or 78 percent.

Aggregate season math, two events at $1.5B each. Now suppose the same insurer experiences two events totaling $3B in residential losses — Helene plus Milton, hypothetically. Because the $200M retention is applied per event, the insurer absorbs $400M in retention across the two events. FHCF reimbursement per event is 0.90 times ($1,500M minus $200M), or $1.17B per event, summing to $2.34B for the season. Compare that to a single $3B event in which the retention is applied once: 0.90 times ($3,000M minus $200M), or $2.52B. The two-event season produces $180M less in FHCF reimbursement than a single event of the same aggregate magnitude, simply because the per-event retention is paid twice. This is why insurers prefer one large event to two medium events at the same aggregate dollar amount.

If the insurer had elected the 45% layer instead. Per-event reimbursement is 0.45 times $1,300M, or $585M — half of the 90% layer. The insurer's net retained loss balloons to $915M for the single-event scenario. The 45% election pays a much lower reimbursement-contract premium under F.S. § 215.555(2)(a)4 in exchange for lower reimbursement; it is the layer of choice for smaller insurers whose policyholder surplus can absorb the larger net retained loss.

Why the FHCF matters for Florida consumer premium

The FHCF was created in 1993 after Hurricane Andrew exposed the fragility of the Florida private reinsurance market — admitted insurers were unable to obtain catastrophe reinsurance at any price, and the legislature created the FHCF as a state-backed structured layer of reinsurance to fill the gap. Today the FHCF is the single largest source of catastrophe reinsurance in the Florida residential market, and its existence materially holds down what every Florida admitted residential insurer (Citizens included) must charge to satisfy its OIR-approved rate filing.

OIR rate-filing actuarial memoranda and SBA-published "without-FHCF" counterfactual analyses typically estimate the FHCF contribution to the consumer windstorm premium at 5%-15% of windstorm premium, depending on the insurer's layer election, retention, and county risk profile. For a Tier-1 coastal Florida homeowner paying $3,000 per year in the windstorm portion of premium, that translates to roughly $150-$450 of annual windstorm premium that exists because of the FHCF — i.e., would be added back if the FHCF did not exist. The calculator's consumer-view output produces this estimate for your specific windstorm premium, scaled by the insurer's layer election.

The structural reason: reinsurance is typically 30%-50% of the windstorm portion of a Florida residential premium. Because the FHCF sells its layer at below-private-market cost, the savings are flowed through to consumer premium in the OIR-approved rate filing. Strip the FHCF out of the reinsurance program and the insurer must either replace the layer at private-market cost (substantially higher) or run at higher net retention (substantially riskier for its surplus) — either way the consumer premium rises to fund the replacement.

What the calculator does not do

This calculator is a planning estimator for the structural FHCF math. It does not:

• Produce a binding reimbursement figure for a specific insurer's specific event. Actual FHCF reimbursement depends on the precise terms of the insurer's annual reimbursement contract, the SBA's verification of the insurer's reported losses, and the program-wide pro-rata factor (if any) under F.S. § 215.555(4)(c). The calculator models the contract structure; a real reimbursement calculation requires the contract, the loss filings, and the SBA's verification.
• Model the FHCF assessment mechanism. F.S. § 215.555(6) authorizes the SBA to levy emergency assessments on virtually all Florida property and casualty insurance lines if program resources are insufficient to pay reimbursements — capped at 6 percent of premium per year per line and 10 percent in the aggregate. Assessments have been levied only once in program history (after the 2004-2005 seasons); the program has been assessment-free since 2015. The assessment exposure is real but tail-risk and is not modeled here.
• Capture the Citizens-specific FHCF interaction in full. Citizens carries its own retention, its own reinsurance program, and its own assessment authority under F.S. § 627.351(6)(b)3 that is distinct from FHCF assessments. The two assessment mechanisms can be triggered by the same severe season. Run the Citizens vs Private Market Calculator alongside this one for the consumer-side Citizens picture.
• Project across multi-year horizons. The FHCF reimbursement contract is renewed annually; program capacity, retention totals, and layer structure can change year-over-year as the SBA's bond authority and the Florida legislature direct. The calculator reflects the 2025-2026 contract year and is refreshed each year against the SBA FHCF Annual Report.

How this page is maintained

F.S. § 215.555 has been amended multiple times since the FHCF was created in 1993 — most consequentially by SB 2-A in 2008 (which added the 90 percent reimbursement layer and the 75 and 45 percent options), and again by 2022 legislative reforms that adjusted the bond authority and pre-event liquidity instruments. The substantive structural features — mandatory participation, per-event retention, layered reimbursement, capacity-cap pro-rata — have remained stable through 2026. The dollar values of program capacity, retention totals, and the consumer-premium contribution move year-over-year and are refreshed against the SBA FHCF Annual Report and OIR-published rate-filing actuarial memoranda each contract year.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-15 against F.S. § 215.555, F.S. § 215.555(2)(a)4, F.S. § 215.555(4)(b), F.S. § 215.555(4)(c), SBA FHCF Annual Reports 2024-2026, and current Florida OIR rate-filing actuarial memoranda.