reThought Flood Partners with Vertafore to Scale Private Flood Insurance Distribution

Managing General Agent reThought Flood is integrating its private flood insurance products into Vertafore’s PL Rating platform to streamline distribution for independent agencies. This move allows brokers to access specialized flood quotes within their existing personal lines workflows, addressing a critical protection gap as shifting FEMA flood maps place more residential properties into high-risk categories.

What was announced

reThought Flood has selected Vertafore’s PL Rating software to expand the reach of its private flood insurance offerings. PL Rating is a comparative rating solution that connects more than 10,000 independent agents with a network of over 320 carriers and MGAs. The platform serves as a high-volume hub for the sector; in 2025 alone, insurance agents completed 6.8 million flood-related transactions through the system.

The integration is designed to provide reThought Flood with "Distribution Velocity," a strategic focus on increasing the speed and intentionality of product placement. By embedding its products into a platform that agents use daily for homeowners and other personal lines, the MGA removes the manual friction typically associated with quoting flood insurance as a standalone risk. This connectivity is particularly relevant following recent updates to FEMA’s flood maps, which have reclassified thousands of residential properties into high-risk Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA).

Vertafore’s technology supports the MGA lifecycle through a connected ecosystem that includes underwriting, policy administration, distribution, and AI-enabled workflows. For reThought Flood, the adoption of PL Rating acts as an entry point into this broader ecosystem, allowing for more efficient scaling of underwriting capacity and making private market alternatives more accessible to retail agencies at the point of sale.

"We looked at multiple comparative raters, and Vertafore stood out as the gold standard in the insurance industry for agency connectivity. PL Rating gives us access to the network of agents already quoting personal lines every day. We saw Vertafore as the right partner to help us expand our distribution and make flood insurance more accessible to the people who need it."

Kevin Thoms, director at reThought Flood.

The companies involved

reThought Flood is a specialized Managing General Agent (MGA) that focuses on the flood insurance market. The company utilizes advanced data analytics and proprietary underwriting techniques to provide private market coverage options, often serving as an alternative to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). As an MGA, it handles the complexities of risk assessment and capacity management while relying on technology to bridge the gap between complex underwriting and retail distribution.

Vertafore is a prominent provider of insurance technology, offering a suite of solutions that connect the various stakeholders in the insurance value chain, including agencies, carriers, and MGAs. The company’s MGA Business Unit is led by Emily McGinn, who serves as SVP & GM. Vertafore’s tools are designed to modernize legacy workflows and improve the efficiency of policy administration and distribution. Its PL Rating software is a central component of its personal lines strategy, facilitating millions of quotes annually and providing a standardized interface for agents to compare coverage across multiple providers.

What FF News has reported before

reThought Flood has a history of participating in industry-wide efforts to modernize insurance data and transparency. FF News previously covered the company’s involvement in a major data standard initiative in the report openIDL Launches First-Ever Free and Open Production-Ready Insurance Data Standard: openIDS Homeowners Standard v.1.0. This project, published in late 2025, focused on creating a free and open production-ready standard for homeowners' insurance data, highlighting reThought Flood’s role in advancing how risk information is shared across the property insurance sector to improve underwriting accuracy and regulatory reporting.

What this means from an insurtech perspective

This partnership signals a shift in the private flood market from a "specialty" niche to a mainstream personal lines consideration. By integrating with a comparative rater, reThought Flood is putting significant pressure on incumbent vendors and the NFIP, which often rely on manual, fragmented processes. For carriers and reinsurers, this connectivity is essential for maintaining loss ratios; surfacing flood quotes alongside standard homeowners' policies helps mitigate the risk of adverse selection and addresses the chronic under-insurance of residential properties. The move highlights a broader trend where MGAs must prioritize "Distribution Velocity" over pure underwriting excellence to capture market share in a hardening property environment.