Law360, New York (May 25, 2016, 11:14 AM EDT) -- Most people think of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as the federal agency that provides emergency governmental relief after major weather events and natural disasters. Some readers may be unaware, however, that FEMA also administers a program of national flood insurance. Under this National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), homeowners who live in designated flood zones and have home mortgages are required to purchase flood insurance policies. Most of those policies are sold by private insurance carriers that FEMA contracts with. This is known as the "Write-Your-Own (WYO) Program." FEMA also directly issues and administers a limited number of flood policies itself under the "NFIP Direct" program. Homeowners in these programs pay an insurance premium in exchange for a standardized flood insurance policy. The private NFIP flood carriers in the WYO program receive a portion of the premiums, but bear no actual insurance risk: all NFIP claims are paid out of the federal Treasury.[1]...