Louisiana is requiring property insurers to discount premiums on FORTIFIED homes – and carriers have until January 1, 2027 to be ready.
The Louisiana Department of Insurance issued Bulletin 2026-04 on April 29, 2026, notifying every property and casualty insurer and producer authorized to write in the state that Regulation 136 - Fortified Homes Premium Discounts – has been promulgated.
Under the regulation, insurers must provide premium discounts on residential properties that obtain a FORTIFIED designation in accordance with standards developed by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS).
The discounts are not left to insurers' discretion. They have to be determined using a Louisiana-specific discount benchmark table developed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). The bulletin directs carriers to ldi.la.gov/fortifiedbenchmarks for the applicable benchmark information.
How the table was built matters for any carrier reviewing its rate filings. According to the bulletin, the Louisiana-specific benchmark mitigation discount table was developed using two industry-standard hurricane catastrophe models: Verisk (previously AIR) and Moody's (previously RMS).
The NAIC's Catastrophe Risk Management Center of Excellence ran representative average Louisiana single-family homes – at varying levels of mitigation including unmitigated, IBHS FORTIFIED Roof, Silver, and Gold – through those models. Model loss output was calculated by region (North, Central, South) and further adjusted to reflect insurers' expenses. The expense assumptions, the bulletin says, were determined from a review of publicly available Louisiana homeowner rate filings.
That process, the LDI explains, allows the Louisiana modeled reduction in hurricane expected loss to be converted into a premium discount, as illustrated in the benchmark mitigation discount table.
The full methodology document is available for download from the Fortified Benchmarks webpage, or directly via the link provided in the bulletin. For carriers, it is the document that will likely receive the closest read - any pushback on the prescribed discount levels will run through the modeling assumptions that produced them.
Bulletin 2026-04 is a revised and reissued version of the original. It was signed in Baton Rouge by Commissioner Timothy J. Temple on April 29, 2026. The required discounts apply to all new or renewed residential property insurance policies issued on or after January 1, 2027.
The operational lift now falls to insurers and producers. Rating systems, underwriting workflows, and policyholder-facing documents all need to apply the mandated discounts from day one. Producers, who are also named in the bulletin's addressee line, will be on the front line of explaining the discounts to clients with FORTIFIED-designated homes.
Questions on the bulletin go to the Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Property and Casualty at 225-342-5203 or [email protected].
