NFIP Reinsurance Broker Support

Description

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) SUMMARY: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires contractor support services The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968 as a result of the continuing periodic flood disasters experienced by communities throughout the US that damaged or destroyed infrastructure, buildings, and homes, making it difficult for the communities and their residents to recover.  The mission of the NFIP is to (1) identify the special flood hazard areas (SFHAs), (2) develop standards for effective floodplain management in those SFHAs, and (3) provide flood insurance to buildings and homeowners. 

GENERAL INFORMATION:  This RFI is issued solely for information-gathering purposes to identify sources that can provide support services from a reinsurance brokerage firm as FID continues to build and expand the NRP.  FID has separated the required broker support services into three Work Areas – Strategic Advisory and Support, Placement Execution and Administration, and Modeling and Risk Analytics, as described below.  Compensation for these work areas would include potential multiple placements effective within a one-year period.

The purpose of this acquisition is to obtain support services from a reinsurance brokerage firm as FID continues to build and expand the NRP.  FID has separated the required broker support services into three Work Areas – Strategic Advisory and Support, Placement Execution and Administration, and Modeling and Risk Analytics, as described below.  Compensation for these work areas would include potential multiple placements effective within a one-year period. In accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.201(e), RFIs may be used when the Government wants to obtain price, delivery, other market information, and capabilities for planning purposes.

Responses to this RFI are strictly voluntary and FEMA will NOT pay respondents for information provided in response to this RFI. Responses to this RFI will NOT be returned and respondents will NOT be notified of the result of the review. If a Solicitation is issued, it will be announced on the SAM website: https://sam.gov/content/opportunities at a later date, and all interested parties must respond to that Solicitation announcement separately from any response to this announcement. Responding to this RFI will not give any advantage to or preclude any organization in any subsequent competition. This RFI does NOT restrict the Government's acquisition approach to a future Solicitation.

Small businesses and organizations are encouraged to reply. Consortia of organizations may be formed to respond to this RFI, and do not limit the ability of groups of respondents to change to respond to any subsequent Solicitation. Responses may be from legally registered organizations or consortia of organizations. Responses from individuals will not be reviewed.

PROPRIETARY INFORMATION AND DISCLAIMERS:  Respondents shall identify any proprietary information in their RFI response. Information submitted in response to this RFI will be used at the discretion of the Government. Further, the information submitted will remain confidential insofar as permitted by law, including the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts. FEMA reserves the right to utilize any non-proprietary technical information in the anticipated solicitation.

Although it is not necessary to address in their response, respondents shall be aware of any potential, actual, or perceived organizational conflicts of interest. Any real or potential conflicts must be sufficiently mitigated prior to a contract award. For further guidance, refer to the FAR Part 9.5.

NAICS CODE: 524130 – Reinsurance Carriers

PRODUCT SERVICE CODE (PSC): G008 – Social – Government Insurance Programs:  Other

ANTICIPATED PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE:  2nd Quarter of FY2026

ATTACHMENT 1: Draft Performance Work Statement

RFI RESPONSE SUBMITTAL INSTRUCTIONS:

Interested organizations shall submit their RFI responses electronically to Glen Seipp, Contracting Officer, at Glen.Seipp@fema.dhs.gov and Amanda Lynn Long, Contract Specialist, at Amanda.long@fema.dhs.gov no later than 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST), Wednesday, April 23, 2025 TBD, 3:00 PM EST.

“RFI 70FA6025I00000005 Reinsurance Broker Services Response” shall be in the subject line of your e-mail.  Responses should be submitted as a single email attachment, in either Microsoft Word or PDF format. All responses shall be unclassified, with proprietary information clearly marked. Do not include promotional materials. All pages should be numbered consecutively beginning with Page 1, be single-spaced, and use one-inch margins on 8.5 x 11 inches. Responses must use 11‐point font; the only exception is for charts, graphs, or tables which must use a minimum of 10-point font. When responding to RFI Questions, it is not necessary to repeat, rephrase, or reiterate the RFI Questions; simply refer to Question 1, Question 2, and so on.

Responses to this RFI must not exceed 20 pages in length including the following sections: cover page, organization’s capability statement, organization’s responses to FEMA’s RFI questions, and organization’s questions to FEMA regarding this requirement. Submissions exceeding this length will not be read. Respondents may choose how much of the 20-page limit they devote to any particular section of their RFI responses, but RFI responses shall include the following information and be presented in the below order: 

A.   Cover Page with the following information:

1. Organization(s) Name 
2. Organization(s) Address 
3. Organization(s) Point of Contact - Name, Title, Phone, and Email address
4. Sector, e.g., public, private, academic, non-profit organization, philanthropic foundation.
5. Primary field(s) of work, e.g., hazard mitigation, community development, climate sciences, research, strategic communication, or other
6. Business Size: Interested sources shall identify their business size based on the assigned North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code in this RFI. Responses may be used to develop and/or determine if small business prime and subcontracting opportunities exist for this requirement. Please also include any small business and/or socioeconomic certifications you may hold (such as WOSB, HUBZone, SDVOSB, or 8(a)). For more information, reference FAR Part 19 Small Business Programs and https://www.sba.gov/federal-contracting/contracting-guide/size-standards.
7. Unique Entity Identification (UEI) Number               
8. If applicable, General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule Number, Contract Number, and Period of Performance and/or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Strategic Sourcing Vehicle Category Name and Contract Number.

B.   Organization’s Capability Statement

1.   Summary of relevant projects showing capabilities, including a list of customers and contracts covering the past three years for work considered most relevant to FEMA’s description of need.

2.   Past performance in applicable areas

C.   Organization’s Responses to FEMA’s RFI Questions  

D. Organization’s Questions for FEMA regarding this requirement

Constructive feedback on any one or more of the questions is welcomed and will not prejudice the organization in any way for any future award. The responses received will assist FEMA with identifying the number and nature of the entities that consider themselves potential technical solution providers.

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) QUESTIONS

Question 1: Is there anything that needs to be more clearly defined by FEMA in the attached draft Performance Work Statement (PWS)?

Question 2: Describe any customary commercial contract terms or conditions you feel would make any resulting contract more effective and why.

Question 3: Please provide input regarding the type of contract(s) and contract structure(s), including pricing structure(s). For example, do you recommend procuring the architecture and engineering services separately from the rest of the requirements?

The questions in this RFI for NFIP reinsurance broker services are not intended to address every aspect of our forthcoming RFP for these services.  In fact, we would like to reduce the length of responses to reduce the effort required on both sides.  They only address important issues for which we think the variations among reinsurance brokerage firms could be very significant.

Question 1:

In addition to NFIP flood model output for each of several major catastrophe model vendors, the Federal Insurance Directorate (FID) also uses an “ensemble” view of risk that blends and weights the output from multiple selected catastrophe model vendors into a single view of risk reflecting various adjustments as if all of the models/components were separate components of the same model.  Model components are separated by sub-peril for each vendor to treat missing sub-perils from any particular version of vendor flood models, as well as different weightings and adjustments to the output for any individual vendor sub-peril.

Development of this ensemble view requires additional separate software tools that can import the individual components of the NFIP model output files by vendor/sub-peril for the applicable adjustments, weighting, and blending.  The modeling must properly reflect the correlation between sub-perils in a mathematically credible and coherent manner and provide full probability distributions and statistical metrics of interest for decision-making to FID.

Please describe the software that you have available to accomplish these objectives for a complete ensemble view of NFIP risk and how the important objectives described are accomplished.

To the extent that the software applies Monte-Carlo simulation, describe the number of full simulation sets reflecting all variables and model components that the software can accommodate within an estimated amount of runtime for a total US flood model using output from all components of three separate model vendors (we expect that more detailed models by grouping of states and multi-year models will have longer run times).  For example, “for a total US model combining three major model vendors, our software can be expected to run 1 million sets of simulations within 30-45 minutes.  Additional runtime for higher numbers of simulations and multiple years is roughly proportional to the numbers for each of those variables.”

Please limit your replies to this question to roughly three pages with no expectation that an adequate reply requires a written response of three pages – a shorter reply may be entirely acceptable.

Question 2:

Detailed preparation of the NFIP model input data has been an arduous process for many years because of missing NFIP fields required for model input that required alternative data sources for millions of records and later because of the transition from this legacy NFIP coding system to the updated coding of the NFIP risk rating 2.0 system.  Much of this data prep had been completed by the broker analytics teams of catastrophe modelers in conjunction with a small team of FID modelers and analysts.  The process has now fully transitioned to the use of updated NFIP risk rating 2.0 coding that is expected to significantly reduce the amount of data preparation work in the future.

Despite the expected reduction in the workload for model input data preparation, there are unpredictable details that could arise with required adjustments to data for reasons such as outdated valuations of the underlying database used for the input, or significant amounts of coding data that appears illogical.  Another unpredictable circumstance would be internal FID turnover among the limited FID staff involved in this work.  With roughly four million records of NFIP data in force, our ability to meet the planned timeline for the annual reinsurance renewal could require the broker analytics team to provide additional resources on short notice that would be compensated by an appropriate increase in broker fees paid.

Please explain your firm’s ability to provide such additional analytics team resources on short notice to address unpredictable contingencies in model input data preparation to meet the NFIP reinsurance renewal timeline.  Include any complications in doing so and assume that your firm would be paid the appropriate additional compensation for such additional work.

Please limit your reply to this question to one page with no expectation that an adequate reply requires a written response of a full page.

Question 3:

The unlucky timing of turnover on the broker teams could also disrupt the NFIP reinsurance renewal.  Please explain the flexibility that your firm can deliver to address turnover among the broker teams during the NFIP reinsurance renewal process.  Include an explanation of the degree to which this flexibility varies between the different professional skill sets involved (e.g., broker lead, analytics lead, brokers, actuaries, cat modelers, other analytics team members, attorneys, etc.)

Please limit your reply to this question to one page with no expectation that an adequate reply requires a written response of a full page.

Question 4:

In contrast to the percentage of reinsurance premium fees typically paid for reinsurance broker services, FEMA has always paid flat dollar amounts annually for separate parts of its reinsurance broker services which more easily aligns with government budgeting processes.  However, more flexibility may be available for the manner in which FEMA compensates brokers.

Please explain how your firm would prefer to be compensated for its reinsurance broker services, such as a full percentage of premium, fully flat fees, or a hybrid approach between the percentage of premium and flat fees. If you prefer a full percentage of the premium, let us know your preference between the two other approaches if a full percentage is not available.

Please limit your reply to this question to one page with no expectation that an adequate reply requires a written response of a full page.

Question 5:

Please explain any ideas that you think should be considered in the RFP for NFIP reinsurance broker services that you would not necessarily expect to be reflected in the RFP.

Please limit your reply to this question to one page with no expectation that an adequate reply requires a written response of a full page.