Since the 2007 Legislative Session, admitted insurance carriers in Louisiana have been required to offer premium discounts for properties’ compliance with the building code and for installation of mitigation measures that reduce wind-related losses.

Your home may already have many of these qualifying construction techniques, which include roof bracing, roof geometry, secondary water barriers, opening protection, and more.  Discounts will be applied once an approved Wind Mitigation Surveyor  completes a Louisiana Hurricane Loss Mitigation Survey Form and submits to your insurer.  One-time inspection fees are approximately $300-600.

Across a sample of 300 surveys conducted statewide, wind mitigation survey companies have found that the average savings for Louisiana policyholders is $2,198/year.

The Louisiana Department of Insurance (LDI) provides a Wind Mitigation Survey guide publishes a Wind Mitigation Discount list, with credits by company.  For example, Safepoint Insurance Company offers a 15% discount for opening protection, a 15% discount for building code compliance, and a 15% discount for roof geometry.  Select examples of discounts in Southeast Louisiana include:

As required by Act 1 of the 2023 Legislative Session, admitted insurance carriers in Louisiana must offer discounts to insureds who build or retrofit structures to FORTIFIED home or commercial standards, created by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS).

FORTIFIED is a construction method, backed by decades of research and embraced by the insurance industry, that protects homes and commercial structures against wind, hail, and hurricane damage.  For example, FORTIFIED requires ring-shank nails, installed in an enhanced pattern, to help keep the roof deck attached to your home.

The Louisiana Department of Insurance (LDI), publishes an annual report on premium discounts for FORTIFIED roofs and retrofits.  For example, State Farm offers a discount ranging from 19-35%. Some insurers discounts vary by territory or zone.  The enumerated discounts are only for structures that receive a  FORTIFIED Roof designation; structures that receive either FORTIFIED Silver or Gold designation may qualify for supplemental discounts.

In a recent report, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor projected that the median savings for Louisianians installing FORTIFIED roofs would total $17,879 over 15 years, with higher benefit-cost ratios for roofs that are already at the end of their useful life and need replacement.

Policyholders are advised to check with their insurer or agent to see your FORTIFIED discount, and to confirm, whether this discount is to the wind/hail portion or the total premium.  Per LDI, discounts provided by insurers include:

If you are unable to install FORTIFIED Roof before the next storm, you should consider adding a “FORTIFIED Endorsement” to your homeowners policy.  An endorsement, also called a rider, is a formal addition to your existing insurance policy that modifies or expands coverage.  Upon experiencing a covered loss, an endorsement for a FORTIFIED roof will pay additional funds to help offset the cost of upgrading to a FORTIFIED Roof. Cost for the endorsement varies by carrier.

Act 12 (Firment) of the 2023 Regular Session requires that “any authorized insurer writing homeowners’ insurance policies shall offer an endorsement to upgrade an insured’s nonfortified home to comply with the fortified roof standards.”

Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) Dallas has a FORTIFIED Fund providing two grants – up to $15,000 to replace an existing roof or up to $7,500 for a newly constructed home.  FHLB Dallas allocated $10M in 2025 and awarded $4M in 2024 to this fund.

Income-qualified homeowners (having a family income of 120% or less of AMI) may only access the funds through a participating FHLB Dallas member institution, like Metairie Bank, Eureka Homestead, and more.  Some members, like Gulf Coast Bank, are accepting applications via NGO partners, like Rebuilding Together New Orleans.

FHLB Dallas’ FORTIFIED Fund grants are available until they are exhausted. Funds are committed on a first-come, first-serve, homeowner-by-homeowner basis.  Contact FORTIFIEDfund@fhlb.com with questions.

For voluntarily retrofitting your residential property to bring it into compliance with the building code, you can receive a “construction code retrofitting deduction,” apply to your individual income tax.  Capped at $5,000 per structure, deductions are equal to 50% of the cost paid for the retrofit.The taxpayer must claim the homestead exemption for the home being retrofitted and the home cannot be a rental property.  For more information, consult Department of Revenue’s bulletin at gnoinc.org/constructiondeduction.

Through Act 404 (Talbot) of the 2025 Regular Session, a new income tax credit for expenses related to fortifying a roof was established.  Resident taxpayers with homestead exemptions may receive a credit up to $10,000 for IBHS-certified FORTIFIED roof installations after July 1, 2025.  Homeowners who receive Louisiana Fortify Homes Program grants are not eligible for this specific credit.

Also, purchases of storm shutter devices for hurricane protection are excluded from state sales and use tax.

The Insure Louisiana Incentive Program was enacted during the 2022 Legislative Session to stabilize the residential and commercial market by encouraging additional property insurers to write coverage, increase competitive pressure on insurance rates, and reduce the volume of business written by the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation.

The program was funded with $45M in the 2023 Special Session and $10M in the 2023 Regular Session.  Participating insurers must write four times net written premiums for each grant dollar received.  Eight companies, including two insurers new to the Louisiana market, are participating in the program.

By January 2024, over 60,000 policies have been written under the program, and over 30,300 policies have been written in the Greater New Orleans region. As of Q1 2025, $184M in total premium has been written statewide, and $110M in the GNO region. From $55M in grants, $220M in premiums should ultimately be written statewide, within 24 months of awards.

Top three parishes, in terms of total premium, are Jefferson, Orleans, St. Tammany,. Property owners in all parishes are encouraged to contact their agents for new quotes from participating companies, which include:

• Allied Trust Insurance Company
• Cajun Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange (CURE)
• Constitution Insurance Company
• Elevate Reciprocal Exchange
• Gulf States Insurance Company
• SafePoint Insurance Company
• SafePort Insurance Company
• SureChoice Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange (SURE)

Louisiana has reached a milestone of 10,000 FORTIFIED roofs installed statewide, and over 4,000 were supported by the Louisiana Fortify Homes Program.  An additional 1,300 awards are pending, as of December 2025.  There have been eight rounds of grants issued to date.

The Louisiana Fortify Homes Program provides grants up to $10,000 for homeowners to upgrade their roofs to the FORTIFIED standards.  The grant program was funded at $30M during the 2023 Regular Session.  The program helps Louisiana homeowners strengthen roofs of their primary residences to better withstand severe weather, while receiving discounts on premiums.  Homeowners are responsible for all costs beyond the full grant amount, including FORTIFIED evaluation fees.

Homeowners must visit ldi.la.gov/fortifyhomes to learn more about the program and sign-up for updates on future grant rounds.  Participants are randomly selected through a lottery system.  For all rounds, applications will be submitted online and accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.   Those interested in applying are encouraged to create an online profile in advance.

The Louisiana Legislative Auditor found that found that the median homeowner who received an LFHP grant and got a FORTIFIED Roof saved $1,250 (22%) on their annual homeowner’s insurance costs, lowering their annual premium from $5,625 to $4,375.  While installation costs ranging widely depending on home size, the median cost to upgrade to FORTIFIED was $16,229, or $6,229 after accounting for the $10,000 grant.

During the 2024 Regular Session, $20M was appropriated by the legislature to the Department of Insurance to issue additional grant.  Another $15M was including in the state budget during the 2025 Regular Session.  Furthermore, for recurring revenue, Act 79 (Hebert) directed that $5M each, from surplus lines taxes and from fire, marine, transportation, casualty, and surety taxes, be deposited in the Louisiana Fortify Homes Program fund each fiscal year.

Jefferson Parish has launched the Roof Enhancement Lottery Incentive Fund (R.E.L.I.F.), a first-of-its-kind program designed exclusively for Jefferson Parish residents.   Through this initiative, homeowners in Jefferson Parish who register and win the Louisiana Department of Insurance (LDI) Fortify Homes Grant program grant lottery, offering up to $10,000, may qualify for up to $5,000 in additional assistance.  All questions about “gap funds” should be directed to Councilmember Van Vrancken’s office at (504) 736-6615 or Jennifer@JeffParish.gov.   Councilmember Van Vrancken said, “Our goal is simple: empower Jefferson Parish homeowners to install more fortified roofs, reducing the risk of storm damage, and attracting more insurers back to the market.”

The City of New Orleans deployed its own Owner-Occupied Fortified Roof Program in 2024. Eligible homeowners may receive up to $35,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to install a new fortified roof.  Eligibility is limited to individuals with incomes must be at or below 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI).  The program is operated in partnership with Rebuilding Together New Orleans, which intakes applications at 504-264-1815 or info@rtno.org.

Louisiana, through the Louisiana State Uniform Construction Code Council (LSUCCC), has adopted 2021 International Construction Codes (ICC), effective January 1, 2023.  This upgrades Louisiana from 2015 ICC standards.  Louisiana has also adopted special amendments to enhance wind and flood protection for structures in coastal zones.  This adoption upgraded Louisiana from outdated 2015 ICC codes.  In the their 2024 “Rating the States” report, IBHS deemed Louisiana the 5^th best state based on building code adoption, enforcement, training, education, and contractor licensing.

Recent legislative reform in the 2024 Regular Legislative Session has aligned Louisiana with national norms.  Act 3 (Talbot) has standardized the fair claims process, and Act 9 (Firment) has eliminated the three-year rule.  Furthermore, the State of Louisiana and Louisiana-based businesses are championing the next generation of insurance concepts, compacts, and products.

Through Act 229 (Carver), Louisiana has established an Insurance Regulatory Sandbox, which allows the commissioner to grant a variance or waiver in order to introduce an “innovative or more efficient insurance product or service.”  The commissioner may also enter into agreements with other states for reciprocity of applications for innovation waivers.  And, through HCR53 (Glorioso), the commissioner is requested to investigate the potential for creating a Coastal Reinsurance Assistance Program.  This cooperative reinsurance product is to be developed with coastal states including but not limited to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.  Once developed, this product could be offered to “insurers at a reduced cost, and require the cost savings to be passed to consumers through reduced property insurance premiums.”

The Louisiana Disaster Reduction Initiative (DRI), led by the LSU AgCenter, seeks to develop a suite of cutting-edge technologies that make flood and wind mitigation easier to understand, implement, and scale.  DRI was one of 29 finalists for the National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) program.  DRI key technology areas are Risk Reduction Decision Support Technology, Insurance Affordability Decision Support Technology, Construction Compliance Technology, Educational Technology, and Emerging Disaster Risk Reduction Technology.  GNO, Inc. serves on the Strategic Regional Investment and Governance & Management change drivers.

Greater New Orleans startups, part of our StartupNOLA ecosystem, are promoting creative, entrepreneurial solutions to data management and claims processes.  ForeFront360 has created an innovative, dimensional data-driven and imaging strategy to enhance property insurance efficiency and claim accuracy. The company – by working with homeowners, commercial property owners, municipalities, educational institutions and more – supports both policyholders and insurers in mitigating risks and improving the precision of both policy coverage and the claims process.   BuildSOS has launched a one-stop platform that brings together community, builders, insurers, suppliers, government, and nonprofits in a way that reduces risk, fraud, community, and anxiety.  The company allows for property owners to verify that contractors have a valid license and qualifications, which saves both the homeowner insurer money.   RCOAST, the 2025 QBE AcceliCITY Resilience Challenge grand prize winner, detects coastal change to reveal how risk is evolving and where interventions are working

GNO, Inc. also served as a judge for RISE’s Flood Insurance of the Future Challenge, funding startups that improve data, analysis, and modeling to drive flood insurance affordability, flood-risk transfer, and implementation of flood mitigation measures.  GNO, Inc. is also a partner of InnSure’s $5M Insurance Innovation Prize, funded by NYSERDA,  to create new insurance solutions that will accelerate the adoption of energy transition technologies such as solar, wind, EVs, clean buildings, and more.   GNO, Inc. continues to explore partnerships with nonprofit partners like EDF and the Water Institute on new products, like parametric pilots, and programs that ensure accuracy, affordability, and availability of all types of insurance in Louisiana.

GNO, Inc. and our Coalition for Sustainable Flood Insurance (CSFI), leveraging our longstanding experience in National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) education, are considering long-term, nationwide solutions to insurance affordability and availability challenges.  Although residents in Louisiana are feeling acute affordability pressures, the states with the greatest increases in homeowners premiums from 2021-2024 were Utah (59%), Illinois (50%), Arizona (48%), and Pennsylvania (44%)

A natural catastrophe insurance program should strive to ameliorate private insurers’ and policyholders’ cost burdens simultaneously.   Importantly, we foresee that multi-peril program models would maximize participation, reduce the insurance gap, and incentivize mitigation across our nation.   At minimum, a study commission should be authorized by Congress to evaluate all options and formally recommend an appropriate intervention.

Contact GNO, Inc. to learn more about our NatCat Working Group and ongoing multi-peril explorations.