More than two years after Hurricane Beryl struck the Texas coast, the state-created insurer that covers wind and hail damage on the Texas coast still owes more on the storm than it has set aside to pay. On Nov. 10, its board will vote on whether to borrow about $44 million to cover the gap.
The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, or TWIA, sells wind and hail coverage to coastal property owners who cannot buy it from a private insurer. Its board meets at 9 a.m. at the Omni Corpus Christi Hotel, according to the meeting agenda. Items marked for likely votes include the loan, the 2027 operating budget, the choice of a catastrophe-modeling firm and a follow-up on what agents are paid to sell TWIA policies.
The loan matters because Beryl’s cost keeps rising. A memo from Chief Financial Officer Stuart Harbour, dated Oct. 26 and included in the board meeting materials, says TWIA estimated Beryl’s total losses at $480 million at the end of 2024. By Sept. 30, 2026, that estimate had grown to $535 million.
TWIA paid the first wave of Beryl claims and claims from March and May 2024 storms by withdrawing about $466 million from its Catastrophe Reserve Trust Fund, the savings account it builds from surplus premium to pay for big storms. That took all of the fund’s money set aside for 2024, the memo says. State law requires later losses from a storm year to be paid under that year’s funding rules. With the 2024 money gone, the next step is borrowing. The memo puts the shortfall at $43,656,068.
Staff want the board to approve short-term financing from JPMorgan Chase Bank at a base rate plus 2 percentage points, with no origination fee, the memo says. TWIA says the Texas Department of Insurance, which regulates the association, agreed the plan complies with state law and rules. Because the 2026 hurricane season “has been relatively quiet,” Harbour wrote, TWIA expects to have enough cash to repay the loan within a few days. The principal and interest would then be taken out of TWIA’s 2026 net gain when the year’s books close.
That gain is large. The proposed budget in the packet forecasts 2026 net income of about $335 million. It projects $378.8 million in 2027, on direct written premiums of $770.6 million. That would be down from a forecast $807 million in 2026. The board reviewed a preliminary budget Oct. 8. TWIA then said its reserve fund would hold about $59 million at the end of 2026 and could reach about $350 million by the end of 2027 if no significant storm hits.
The board will also return to agents’ pay. TWIA pays agents a 16% commission on new and renewal policies and 12% on manufactured homes, according to the board’s Aug. 4 minutes. In August, the board voted to seek no rate increase for 2027 and asked staff for more research on commissions. A staff memo for the Nov. 10 meeting reports research from the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas, a trade group for agents. It found that the largest U.S. writer of agents’ errors-and-omissions coverage, which protects agents if they make a costly mistake, adds a 25% surcharge for Texas coastal agents. The 2027 budget includes $123.3 million in commission expense.
The board will also hear a briefing on an Oct. 15 efficiency audit by the firm Weaver for the State Auditor’s Office. House Bill 12, passed in 2025, requires efficiency audits of state agencies, timed ahead of each agency’s Sunset review. The audit found that TWIA’s programs to move policyholders to private insurers have stalled. No private carrier has applied to take over a block of TWIA policies since a 2023 round moved 46 policies. Under a second program, in which private carriers make offers to individual policyholders, the total has held at 4,854 policies since the end of 2022, and no carriers were approved to make offers as of March 31. TWIA had 286,251 policies in force on that date. The auditors recommended clear success criteria and annual targets. TWIA agreed and set a December 2027 implementation date. The Dispatch reported in October on the board’s legislative proposals for the same programs.
Staff also recommend replacing Aon, TWIA’s current catastrophe modeler, with Howden Re after a request for proposals that drew three bids. The modeler estimates potential storm losses.
The public may comment in person or by registering on Zoom, and the meeting will stream on YouTube. TWIA asked for written comments by noon Nov. 6 at PublicComment@TWIA.org but says the board will get every written comment, whenever it arrives. The board’s next scheduled meeting is Feb. 23, 2027, in Galveston.