What Is the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA)?
The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) is the state-established residual-market insurer for wind and hail coverage in designated coastal areas of Texas. "Residual market" means it is the insurer of last resort: it exists for property owners who cannot obtain wind and hail coverage from private insurance companies, not to compete with them. When people on the Texas coast say they "have windstorm," a TWIA policy is often what they mean.
What a TWIA policy covers — and doesn't
TWIA policies cover wind and hail only. They do not cover flooding or storm surge, which require separate flood insurance, and they do not cover the other perils in a homeowners policy — fire, theft, liability. A coastal homeowner therefore commonly carries several policies at once: a homeowners policy that excludes wind, a windstorm policy for wind and hail, and flood insurance. Understanding which policy responds to which kind of damage is half the battle in reading coastal coverage.
Where TWIA operates
TWIA writes coverage only in coastal territory designated under state law. The precise boundaries are set by statute and can be checked directly with TWIA or the Texas Department of Insurance, which publish the current designated areas. If a property is outside the designated territory, wind coverage comes from the private market in the ordinary way.
Eligibility and building standards
Access to residual-market wind coverage is generally tied to the property itself: applicants typically must show that they could not obtain coverage privately, and eligibility can depend on whether construction meets the applicable windstorm building requirements for the area. The current requirements, inspection processes, and forms are published by TWIA and the Texas Department of Insurance and change over time, so check them directly rather than relying on summaries. What wind-resistant construction actually involves — how roofs are attached, how openings are protected, how loads travel from roof to foundation — is engineering with its own vocabulary; FEMA's wind retrofit guide for residential buildings lays out those elements in detail, and this site's retrofit guide covers the terminology.
Deductibles on windstorm policies
Windstorm policies, TWIA's included, commonly carry percentage deductibles: the deductible is a percentage of the property's insured value rather than a flat dollar amount. The Insurance Information Institute's deductible explainer describes how this format works — the percentage applies to the coverage amount, not to the size of the loss, so a 2% deductible on a home insured for $300,000 is $6,000 regardless of whether the claim is for a whole roof or part of one. The percentage deductible guide works through more of the arithmetic, and the calculator on the home page turns any coverage amount and percentage into a dollar figure.
Verifying the details
TWIA and the Texas Department of Insurance are the authoritative sources on territory, eligibility, coverage forms, and current requirements. A licensed Texas agent can tell you whether a specific property is in designated territory and what its options are — questions this reference page deliberately does not answer, because the answers depend on the property and the current rules.