Reforming the National Flood Insurance Program: A Conversation with Jeff Jackson, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Federal Insurance — FEMA

The Business of Government Hour

Jeff Jackson has served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Federal Insurance Directorate within Resilience since 2020. In this role, Jeff leads flood insurance operations for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) at FEMA. The NFIP currently has approximately 4.7 million policyholders across the nation. The program collects over $3.5 billion in revenue annually.

During his tenure, Jeff led FEMA’s efforts to release the NFIP’s new rating methodology. This historic move corrected pricing inequities for close to a million policyholders and addresses the unintended consequence of lower risk, lower value homes subsidizing higher risk and higher value homes. Mr. Jackson also has advocated extensively for changes to the program to address flood insurance affordability, leading the development of the administration’s means-tested affordability proposal.

Jeff has pushed forward a complex regulatory agenda to improve the NFIP’s flood insurance offerings with the goal of providing policyholders more choice and better aligning the program to the private sector. In addition, under his leadership, FEMA has also continued to improve the customer service of the NFIP to policy holders, particularly after disasters.

Previously, Mr. Jackson served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator of the National Preparedness Directorate (NPD) where he worked closely with FEMA regions and field staff to support a prepared and resilient nation.

Prior to that, Mr. Jackson served as Deputy Chief Component Procurement Officer at FEMA, responsible for management and oversight of acquisitions in support of all aspects of FEMA’s mission. Due to the unprecedented disaster activity in 2016-2018, Mr. Jackson oversaw a dramatic increase in procurement demand from $1.6 billion in FY16 to $4.1 billion in Fiscal Year 2018.

Mr. Jackson joined the Senior Executive Service in 2016. He came to FEMA from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), where he managed Information Technology Acquisitions for the IRS, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP), and the Department of Treasury Departmental Offices.

Mr. Jackson is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and lives in Arlington, Virginia.

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