The one line you don't shop on price.
Flood is the federal program. FEMA sets the rate, so the number is the number no matter whose name is on the policy. What's left to get right is the part that decides your claim: the coverage amounts, the timing, and who answers the phone with water in your house.
The short answer
Progressive writes flood insurance in Arkansas through the federal National Flood Insurance Program. FEMA sets NFIP rates, so the price for a given home is the same through any agent — flood is chosen on servicing and on getting the coverage right, not on price. Residential building coverage caps at $250,000 and contents at $100,000, and a new policy generally carries a 30-day waiting period. Both of those matter more in Northwest Arkansas than the premium does.
The rate is set in Washington, not in Bentonville.
Every other line on this site rewards shopping, because two carriers look at the same risk and reach two different numbers. Flood is the exception, and knowing that changes what you should actually be asking about.
Under Risk Rating 2.0, an NFIP premium is built from the specific property — its elevation, its distance to water, the ways it can actually flood — rather than from a zone label alone.
So there is no cheaper flood carrier to find.
The premium for your specific property is the same whether the NFIP policy is serviced through Progressive or through anyone else. Any page — ours included — that implied a Progressive flood discount would be telling you something that isn't true, so we won't.
What that frees up is the rest of the conversation. When price is fixed, the questions that are left are the ones that actually decide a claim: is the building limit sized against what your home would cost to rebuild, did anyone add contents coverage, and does the person who wrote the policy also hold your homeowners policy so the two can be read together.
Those are the parts an agent controls. On flood, they're the only parts anyone controls.
What "federal program" actually means for your policy.
The NFIP is administered by FEMA. Rates, coverage limits, the policy form itself, and the rules governing when coverage begins are all set at the program level and apply nationally. Participating insurance companies sell and service NFIP policies; they do not price them.
That's why the useful comparison on flood isn't between companies. It's between what the program covers and what you assumed it covered — and those two lists come apart in three specific places, below.
Two coverages, two caps, one decision most people skip.
Building and contents are separate purchases on an NFIP policy. That is the single most common gap we find on flood policies written somewhere else.
| Coverage | What it does | Residential limit |
|---|---|---|
| Building | The structure itself — foundation, walls, electrical and plumbing systems, furnace and water heater, built-in appliances, permanently installed cabinetry and flooring. | $250,000 |
| Contents | Your belongings — furniture, electronics, clothing, and other personal property. Optional, and purchased separately. A building-only policy leaves everything inside the house uninsured against flood. | $100,000 |
Building-only is the flood policy nobody notices they bought.
A lender requiring flood insurance is protecting the collateral, which is the building. A policy written to satisfy that requirement can be perfectly compliant and still contain nothing at all for your furniture, your electronics, or your clothes.
If your flood coverage came together at a closing table, it is worth thirty seconds to check whether contents coverage is on it. That's a question we can answer off your declarations page without a quote.
Three things the program handles differently than people expect.
None of these are defects. They are how the federal form is written — and each one is easier to plan around before a loss than to discover during one.
- Hotel and temporary housing
- Meals while displaced
- Storage during repairs
Your homeowners policy has loss-of-use coverage. The NFIP does not carry an equivalent, so a flood that puts you out of the house puts those costs on you.
- Basements and crawl spaces
- Finished walls and flooring below grade
- Personal property stored down there
The program covers below-grade areas on much tighter terms than the rest of the house — largely structural elements and essential equipment rather than finishes and belongings.
- Detached garage
- Not a separate limit
- Shares the $250,000 cap
Building coverage extends a portion of its limit to a detached garage. Other detached structures — sheds, shops, barns — are outside the program and need their own answer.
$250,000 is a program ceiling, not a valuation.
This is where flood insurance and Northwest Arkansas home values have quietly drifted apart, and it's the part of this page worth the most to you.
The most the federal program will pay on the structure, regardless of what the structure is worth or what it would cost to rebuild today.
Above the cap, the loss is yours.
On a home whose replacement cost runs past a quarter-million dollars — which is a great many NWA homes now — a total flood loss pays to the cap and stops. Nothing about that is hidden or unfair. It's a program limit set in federal law, and it hasn't moved with this region's construction costs.
What follows from it is a real decision rather than a worry. Excess flood coverage sits above the NFIP layer and is written in the private market, which means — unlike the layer underneath it — that part is priced by carriers and can genuinely be shopped. Whether it belongs on your account depends on your rebuild cost and your exposure, and that's a conversation, not a checkbox.
The reason to have flood placed by the agency that holds the rest of your account is exactly this: somebody has to be looking at the rebuild number and the flood limit at the same time. Bought in isolation, they never meet.
Three positions on the map, one thing they share.
Homeowners insurance excludes flood — Progressive's and every other carrier's. So flood is always a separate decision, and where you sit on the FEMA map changes who is asking you to make it, not whether the water can arrive.
Zone A or Zone V plus a federally backed loan means flood coverage is required, with building limits that match the lender's requirement. The law and the lender arrive together.
Paid off, or financed outside a federally backed loan? Nobody compels you. You're still in the area the maps identify as the one most likely to flood.
The largest group in Northwest Arkansas, and the one this next part is written for.
The maps describe rivers. Our water often doesn't come from one.
FEMA flood maps are drawn around watercourses and their historic behavior. But a large share of Northwest Arkansas water damage isn't a river cresting — it's flash flooding: water sheeting off a hillside, or backing up in a street that couldn't drain fast enough during one of the hard rains this region gets. That water doesn't check your zone first.
Being outside a mapped zone means no one requires you to buy flood insurance. It does not mean your home can't flood. And because your homeowners policy won't respond to it, an uninsured flood in Zone X is a loss you absorb from the first dollar. Risk Rating 2.0 prices each property on its own risk, so the honest way to settle the question is to find out what your specific address rates at — not to assume the answer from a map that was drawn to describe a different kind of water.
Flood is the one policy you cannot buy in a hurry.
If you take one operational fact off this page, make it this one.
An NFIP policy generally carries a 30-day waiting period before coverage begins. The program allows a narrow set of exceptions — a policy purchased in connection with a loan closing is the one most people encounter — but the default is thirty days, and it exists precisely to stop people from buying against a forecast.
Which means the week the rain is in the forecast is the week it's already too late. Every other decision on this page can be made under pressure. This one can't.
So the right time to ask is a quiet one.
Spring storms here are predictable as a season and unpredictable as a date. If flood coverage is something you've been meaning to look at, the useful move is to ask in a month when nothing is happening — get the property rated, see the actual number, and decide with information instead of urgency.
That's a phone call, and it costs nothing to make.
Wind, water, and which policy answers.
The case for placing flood with the agency that holds your home and auto is continuity, not a discount — and there's one specific claim scenario where that continuity earns its keep.
In a storm that brings both wind and water, causation decides which policy pays. Roof opened by wind, rain in through the opening — that's the homeowners claim. Water rising and entering at grade — that's the flood claim. Both in the same event is common, and when it happens you are working two policies, two deductibles, and two adjusters at once.
When both policies were written by the same agency, you are asking the people who hold both contracts how they fit together. When they weren't, you're asking two call centers, each of whom has a reason to point at the other one. That difference is invisible on a quiet day and very obvious on a bad one.
Progressive's own homeowners materials recognize flood alongside the home policy on the home side, and we'll set that up correctly. The more important step is the one that gets skipped when flood is bought in isolation: making sure the flood building limit was chosen against what your home would actually cost to rebuild, and that the homeowners policy underneath it was sized the same way.
The policies around this one.
Arkansas flood insurance questions.
Does Progressive flood insurance cost less than other flood insurance?
No, and no NFIP flood policy through any agent does. Standard flood insurance in Arkansas is the federal National Flood Insurance Program, and its rates are set by FEMA under Risk Rating 2.0. The price for a given property is the same whichever company's name is on the policy. You do not shop NFIP flood on price. You choose it on servicing, on who answers when you file, and on whether the coverage amounts were sized against what your home would actually cost to rebuild.
Do I need flood insurance if my Northwest Arkansas home is not in a flood zone?
Often yes, even outside a mapped zone. FEMA flood maps are drawn around rivers and their historic behavior, but a large share of Northwest Arkansas water damage is flash flooding, water coming off a hillside or down a street that could not drain fast enough during a hard rain. Being in Zone X means nobody requires you to carry flood insurance. It does not mean your home cannot flood. Homeowners insurance excludes flood entirely, so without a flood policy that loss sits with you.
Is flood covered by my Progressive homeowners policy?
No. Flood is excluded from every homeowners policy, Progressive's and every other carrier's. It is always a separate policy. If your home sits in a Special Flood Hazard Area, Zone A or Zone V, and you carry a federally backed mortgage, federal law requires flood coverage with building limits that match.
What does NFIP flood insurance cover, and what are the limits?
An NFIP policy covers the building and, if you add it, your contents. Residential building coverage is capped at $250,000 and contents at $100,000, and contents are purchased separately rather than included. Additional living expenses are not part of the program at all, and below-grade areas are covered narrowly. Those three points are where flood claims surprise people, and they are the reason to have the policy sized by someone looking at your whole account.
How long does it take for a flood policy to take effect?
An NFIP policy generally carries a 30-day waiting period before coverage begins, with a small set of program exceptions such as a policy purchased in connection with a loan closing. This is the single most important timing fact about flood insurance: it cannot be bought against a storm in the forecast. If you are thinking about flood coverage, the right time to ask is a month before you need it, not the week the rain arrives.
What happens if my home would cost more than $250,000 to rebuild?
The NFIP pays to its cap and stops. On a total flood loss, everything above the $250,000 residential building limit sits with you. That cap is below the replacement cost of a great many Northwest Arkansas homes, which is why excess flood coverage sitting above the NFIP layer is a real conversation here rather than a specialty item. It is priced by the private market rather than by FEMA, so unlike the NFIP layer underneath it, that part can be shopped.
If our insurance guides and coverage explanations are helpful, mark Cribb Insurance as a preferred source so more Northwest Arkansas families can find our local explanations.
Let's size it while the weather is boring.
The rate is federal, but the coverage amounts and the servicing are ours to get right. Tell us your address and roughly what the house would cost to rebuild, and we'll tell you what your building limit should be measured against, whether contents coverage is actually on the policy, where the 30-day clock starts, and whether the layer above the NFIP cap is worth a look. If what you have is already right, we'll tell you that too.
Cribb Insurance Group Inc. is an independent insurance agency licensed in Arkansas. We are not Progressive and we are not FEMA, and this page is not endorsed, sponsored, reviewed, or approved by either. "Progressive" and related marks are trademarks of Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and its affiliates, used here nominatively to identify products we are appointed to place. Flood coverage described on this page is the federal National Flood Insurance Program; NFIP rates are set by FEMA and do not vary by agent or by servicing company.
This page describes coverage in general terms for informational purposes only. It is not a policy, not an offer of insurance, and not a guarantee of coverage, availability, eligibility, or price. Coverage descriptions are abbreviated and do not modify any policy. Coverage, limits, deductibles, waiting periods, exclusions, and eligibility are governed by the terms and conditions of the policy actually issued and by current NFIP program rules. Whether a particular loss is covered depends on the specific facts and on the policy in force. If anything on this page conflicts with the issued policy, the policy controls.
NFIP coverage limits, program rules, waiting-period requirements, and the National Flood Insurance Program's authorization status are set by Congress and FEMA and are subject to change. Flood zone designations and FEMA flood maps are revised over time; confirm your property's current designation with FEMA or your local floodplain administrator. Statements about lender requirements are general information, not legal advice — your lender's requirements are set by the lender and by federal law, and you should confirm them directly.
Nothing on this page is a recommendation to purchase, hold, or terminate any policy, and no coverage amount described here is a recommendation for your situation.
Last reviewed August 2026.