The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association Board of Directors on Tuesday approved a five percent increase to all policyholders' premium rates to take effect next year. However, the board deferred action on a proposal to adjust premium rates based on the likelihood of severe storm damage in a particular area, which was described as a “territorial” rate.

Lee Otis Zapp, chair of the Coastal Windstorm Insurance Coalition, said the cumulative increase, including the five percent, which was approved, and the increases that have been deferred, would amount to a cumulative increase of almost 15 percent. Listen

Zapp said a delegation led by State Representative Eiland, including Galveston County Judge Mark Henry, former mayor Henry Freudenberg, Council Member Elect Marie Robb, and William "Bill" Glenn, Jr., president of the Galveston County Bar Association, was effective in gaining the deferral. 

“We have pleaded for an opportunity to present the other side of the issue to a body that makes these decisions, as it used to be when the commissioner of insurance held hearings,” Zapp said. “We were looking for a way to have an input because we have hired actuaries who find very different results from the ones that TWIA has employed and hired.  So we feel like there is another side of this thing that is not being considered.”