The Hurricane Relief Fund is writing condo excess again — here's who qualifies
The Hurricane Relief Fund is writing condo excess again — here's who qualifies
2026-09-10 · Hawaii · Regulation
Hawaii’s Hurricane Relief Fund, dormant since 2000, has been issuing hurricane-only excess commercial property policies to condominium and townhouse associations since June 2025 — and by April 2026 had written 97 policies against 311 submissions.12
The authority is Act 296 (2025), codified through HRS ch. 431P; the operational launch came with Commissioner’s Memorandum 2025-2A on June 20, 2025, with applications opening June 24, 2025.
Eligibility — two hard gates
- The association must have been denied hurricane coverage by at least two Hawaii-licensed insurers.
- Total insured value must exceed $10 million.
What the policy is
Hurricane wind only, and excess — it attaches above the hurricane master property policy limit plus the HHRF deductible. Minimum underlying hurricane master policy limit: $10 million. Maximum HHRF limit: $140 million; above that a separate hurricane excess policy is required.
The deductible is fixed at 2% per building. The program’s own worked example: $100M insured value, $14M loss, $10M underlying limit → HHRF pays $2M.
Terms are one year with no automatic renewal. Reapply annually. Producer commission is 5% of premium, capped at $5,000, and premium is payable in full.
The two deadlines that lock a board out
Applications must reach a servicing facility 30 days before the desired effective date, with quotes available up to 60 days ahead and backdating up to 10 days with a no-known-loss affidavit.
And the one that matters most: a statewide moratorium on new applications, binding, and coverage increases takes effect whenever a hurricane watch or warning is issued for any island, lasting until 72 hours after it expires.
Why the moratorium changes a board's calendar
A board that waits for weather to concentrate the mind is locked out. In a Hawaii hurricane season, watches and warnings are not rare, and each one closes the window for at least three days past its expiry.
Combined with the 30-day submission rule, renewal work has to begin well before June 1 in practice. A board renewing on July 1 that starts in June is starting in the wrong month.
The uptake numbers, and the one to actually watch
The agency’s own posted data through August 18, 2025 shows the early shape: 135 applications on Oahu, 18 on Maui, 5 on Hawaii Island, 4 on Kauai; 125 / 17 / 5 / 4 quoted; and 26 bound, every one of them on Oahu.3
Reported figures through April 3, 2026: 311 submissions, 16 rejected, 293 quoted, 45 quotes pending, 97 policies issued, about $2.7M in written premium against roughly $2.6B of insured value. Savings are put at about $12M statewide — roughly $4.7M from HHRF-written policies and about $7M from private-market reductions the program’s existence is credited with. Those April figures come from reporting of program-administrator data rather than a posted agency document, so treat them as reported.
The number worth a board’s attention is the bind-to-quote ratio. Roughly a third of quoted associations bound. A quote is not relief; something — price, underlying limit, timing — is stopping two-thirds of them at the last step.
The rate benchmark
Pre-Lahaina condominium hurricane rates ran 8–9 cents per $100 of value. They spiked above $1.00 per $100. They are reported back to 20–30 cents per $100. A board judging its own renewal quote now has a yardstick, and should expect rates to stay above pre-2023 levels rather than return to them.
Who is outside the programme
Associations with total insured value under $10 million are ineligible — a real gap, because small associations are also the ones least able to absorb a surplus-lines premium. Associations valued over $100 million whose primary hurricane limit is $10M get only partial HHRF coverage and must buy separate excess above the $140M ceiling.
Two structural points that affect a board
The HHRF carries no AM Best or Demotech rating. It relies instead on statutory assessment and bonding authority. Lenders and mortgage servicers evaluating a building’s coverage may ask about it.
The programme no longer depends on emergency powers. The Condominium Insurance Stabilization proclamations that reactivated the fund ran to an Eighth proclamation in July 2025 and no longer appear among the state’s active emergency proclamations. Authority now rests on Act 296 and HRS ch. 431P, which is more durable — but it also means any further expansion needs legislation, not a proclamation.
How this connects to the lending problem
Closing the hurricane gap is not an insurance objective for its own sake. Fannie Mae requires master coverage of at least 100% of estimated replacement cost value, and a project whose master policy fails that test can be flagged unavailable for conventional financing regardless of the condition of any individual unit. The HHRF exists because admitted carriers in Hawaii “often cover just 20-30% or less of a building’s hurricane exposure,” in the Insurance Division’s own words.
What to watch
Whether the fund extends beyond associations — the Commissioner’s April 2026 hurricane data call says in terms that its purpose is to test whether the HHRF “may have a similar impact on residential, single-family hurricane coverage.” And whether the sub-$10M eligibility floor is revisited in 2027.
Related Hawaii HOA Topics
- DCCA Insurance Division, Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund program page and FAQs ↩
- Commissioner's Memorandum 2025-2A, “Hawai‘i Hurricane Relief Fund to Start Accepting Applications” (June 20, 2025) ↩
- HHRF Application Status — Statistics by Island (data to August 18, 2025) ↩
- HHRF Underwriting Guidelines, version 2025-10-10 ↩
- The Garden Island, “Use of Hurricane Relief Fund grows significantly,” April 12, 2026 ↩
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