A British company that specializes in underwriting wildfire risk has agreed to a potentially precedent-setting insurance policy that rewards a Northern California ski community for its forest management.
The yearlong experimental policy between Globe Underwriting and Tahoe Donner, announced Tuesday, will provide $2.5 million of wildfire coverage for more than 1,300 acres of forests and ski slopes in the Sierra Nevada mountains. No homes or buildings are insured by the deal.
The policy accounts for decades of work thinning trees and vegetation by Tahoe Donner, a ski resort and homeowners association north of Lake Tahoe. The premium is almost 40 percent lower than what it would have been without the wildfire-prevention work. The deductible is nearly 90 percent lower, according to Willis, an London-based insurance brokerage that helped develop the coverage.
The Nature Conservancy and the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley, assisted with the policy by identifying Tahoe Donner as a potential customer and then worked with the homeowners association on mapping out which of its lands to insure.
