Insurance Policy Tools Can Turn Post-Disaster Recovery into Resilience: New EDF Report

A new report from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) outlines a practical pathway for insurers to transform post-disaster recovery into an opportunity for resilience, helping build safer, more climate-ready communities, and offering policymakers a model to stabilize coverage for the future.

Insurance Endorsements to Support Climate-Ready Residential Rebuilding Post-Disaster demonstrates how simple insurance policy add-ons, known as endorsements, can enable homeowners to rebuild after disasters with upgrades that reduce future risk, cut carbon emissions and lower long-term costs.

“Disasters, while tragedies, can be opportunities to prepare households for our climate future,” said Carolyn Kousky, Vice President of Economics at EDF. “By using insurance endorsements to support climate-ready rebuilding, we can turn recovery into resilience and help ensure homes are safer, more affordable and fortified for our climate future at a time when disasters are growing more frequent and costly.”

The report highlights five key steps insurers can take to make endorsements work:

• Select the right upgrades: Focus on proven, high-impact measures like FORTIFIED roofs, wildfire-safe materials, and electrification. 
• Keep coverage affordable: Design endorsements so they deliver big benefits at manageable cost to households. 
• Build demand: Make climate-ready options the easy and obvious choice for policyholders. 
• Provide guidance and education: Offer clear, simple information and support to help homeowners navigate rebuilding decisions. 
• Strengthen the workforce: Ensure builders and contractors have the training needed to deliver upgrades at scale. 

Proven models, like the FORTIFIED roof program, show that these approaches can dramatically reduce losses while keeping coverage available.

“Insurers already play a central role in recovery for most American households,” said Talley Burley, Senior Manager at EDF. “These endorsements can offer a way for insurers to use that role to drive lasting benefits and minimize future losses for families and communities.”

The report complements EDF’s recent analysis with Cornell University on state-created “markets of last resort.” While those programs show how public insurers can reduce risk and stabilize coverage, this new work underscores how private insurers can harness their reach to drive climate-ready rebuilding at scale.

Read the full report here: https://www.edf.org/insurance-endorsements-report