Flood Re has published its Annual report and Accounts for the year until March 31, 2026, reporting a profit tax of £48.8 million and a solvency capital ratio that rose to 324%.
The scheme ceded an estimated 353,000 policies during the year and held £1,074.7 million in invested and liquid assets.
The results follow a package of reforms Flood Re announced on July 1, 2026 alongside the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, targeting support more precisely at households in need, strengthening property-level flood resilience and preparing for its planned wind-down in 2039.
Alongside the results, Flood Re confirmed that chair Bridget Rosewell (pictured) will step down from the role.
Flood Re marked its tenth anniversary during the year and has now helped more than 742,000 households access affordable flood cover since it was set up in 2016. Around 23% of properties ceded to the scheme during the year had not previously been covered, which Flood Re said shows it continues to reach new households rather than simply retaining existing ones.
Claims during the year came in lower than expected, which Flood Re described as an opportunity to build financial resilience ahead of periods of heavier flood losses, rather than a sign of reduced risk.
The July reforms respond to a pattern Flood Re says has become harder to justify. In three of the past four years, the scheme has spent more repairing homes in Council Tax Bands G and H, fewer than 4% of UK properties, than on homes in Bands A and B, which make up around 45% of the housing stock. To address that, Flood Re will cut the premium it charges insurers for contents-only policies in Bands A and B from £52 to £25 from April 2027, with insurers expected to pass the saving on to lower-income households and renters.
The scheme is also introducing Flood Performance Certificates to recognise property-level resilience work, and expanding its Build Back Better programme, which funds resilience measures for homes that have made a flood claim.
The reforms come against a backdrop of growing flood exposure. Environment Agency data published this year puts around 6.3 million properties in England at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water, a figure expected to reach around 8 million, roughly one in four properties in England, by mid-century. New-build exposure has also drawn insurer attention.
Aviva found that 11% of new homes built in England between 2022 and 2024 sat in areas of medium or high flood risk, up from 8% in the decade to 2022, a trend it linked to housebuilding pushing further into higher-risk land, complicating long-term pricing for properties outside the Flood Re safety net, which only covers homes built before 2009.
Government capital spending is running alongside these pressures. The Environment Agency's 2026/27 programme allocated £1.4 billion to more than 600 schemes, part of a longer-term £7.9 billion capital plan to 2036 expected to benefit around 840,000 properties, spending that matters directly to insurers since flood defence investment is one of the main levers expected to keep claims costs manageable as Flood Re approaches its 2039 end date.
Rosewell will remain in post until a successor is appointed, with Flood Re saying the process to identify its next chair is under way under its established governance arrangements. She has separately been appointed chair of a new Department for Transport taskforce on transit systems.
Perry Thomas, chief executive of Flood Re, said the results showed the scheme continuing to deliver on its founding purpose despite a challenging external landscape, and credited Rosewell's leadership through what he called an important period for the organisation, including its tenth anniversary and the launch of the July reforms.
With claims running below expectations, capital at record levels and a reform package already in motion, Flood Re's own figures suggest a scheme entering its second decade from a position of relative financial strength, even as rising flood exposure and a widening new-build risk pool test how long that strength can hold before the market's planned 2039 transition begins in earnest.
