e-Watermark - New Insurance Outreach Toolkit

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New Insurance Outreach Toolkit

Earning the support of area residents and business owners for changes to local Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) and informing property owners about the new insurance choices that may result is an important part of every community's adoption of new maps.

The NFIP's flood awareness and advertising campaign, FloodSmart, and Hillsborough County (a large, highly populated, urban county surrounding Tampa), Florida, partnered in 2005 to develop a comprehensive suite of outreach materials to explain the re-mapping process and its flood insurance implications. The suite of outreach materials was created to help community officials inform real estate agents, lenders, surveyors, builders, insurance agents, community groups, members of the media, and the public about the upcoming map changes and their impact on flood insurance. These materials were deployed for use in conjunction with the release of Hillsborough County's digital FIRMs, or DFIRMs (see "Hillsborough County Tests Map Mod Outreach" on page 17 of the 2006, Number 2 edition of Watermark.

FloodSmart has incorporated feedback from the use of these outreach materials in Hillsborough County and has now created template versions of each of these pieces. The new templates form a comprehensive toolkit that communities across the country can use to communicate more effectively about map changes and changes in insurance requirements.

The templates for each of the materials are all in Microsoft Word (except for the PowerPoint presentation) and allow easy substitution of information particular to the county/community using it. Included are PDF samples of each piece as it was used when the preliminary DFIRMs were introduced to Hillsborough County. Now available on the Insurance Outreach Toolkit for Flood Map Updates page of the FEMA website, the toolkit is divided into sections to reflect the audiences for whom the various pieces are designed.

It is expected that this toolkit will be a tremendous resource for communities going through map studies and working to educate and inform individuals in their area. For more up-to-date information about flood insurance, visit www.floodsmart.gov. Insurance agents have their own Secured Site For Insurance Agents.

Last updated on December 1, 2006