National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is set to expire midnight tonight, December 21, 2018. Historically, the NFIP has lapsed several times, and in each instance the NFIP was reinstated retroactive to the original date of the temporary lapse.

In the event of a temporary lapse, NFIP cannot renew existing policies, accept new applications for policies, issue new policies on existing applications, increase limits on existing policies, process Letter of Map Amendments or Revision (LOMA/LOMR’s), or perform other policy-administration functions.

Under a retroactive reinstatement, the NFIP will allow its carriers to “renew” a policy during a temporary lapse by receiving payment prior to, or within 30 days of the anniversary date of the policy. Therefore, policies that are set to renew during the lapse, for which the NFIP carrier has received payment, are held and processed as renewed once the NFIP resumes normal operations.

During this time, Cenlar will manage the process by doing the following:

• Focus on NFIP policies that are scheduled to renew during the temporary lapse period in order to make premium payments on escrowed accounts (where a renewal policy or invoice has been received).
• Continue with our standard flood insurance and flood determination tracking processes, including the issuance of policy premiums, document processing, sufficiency evaluations and dispute handling.
• Continue with our standard review of loans progressing through the Loss Mitigation and Assumption process, including the review of the flood determination, presence of coverage, sufficiency evaluation and escrow status.
• Will continue processes for loans in cycle for lack of acceptable coverage and Lender Place Insurance where necessary (this will include loans where a renewal policy or invoice has not been received).