Hawaiian Hurricane Group

When a hurricane hits Hawaii, the way a home is built and where it stands amongst the island’s topography determine how it withstands the storm. The slope of the land, the materials in a roof and the anchoring beneath a home all help determine how well a home holds up.

Even the terrain itself adds complexity. One valley can face torrential rain while another, just a few miles away, stays dry. Winds accelerate as they funnel through mountain passes, shifting force and direction with the landscape and topography.

Yet, traditional insurance models treat these variations uniformly. Homes that share a ZIP code are often assumed to share the same risk, when in reality, their exposures vary dramatically.

This traditional approach results in distorted pricing. Homeowners end up paying for coverage that doesn’t fit their environment, and insurers take on risks they can’t accurately price.

Hawaiian Hurricane Group (HHG)—born in Hawaii and built for Hawaii—set out to replace mainland insurance models with one that understands the islands on their own terms.

“We realized the problem wasn’t the absence of data,” says Cody Doucette, co-founder and president. “It was the inability of conventional systems to interpret it correctly for Hawaii’s unique landscape.”

HHG’s Feature Underwriting & Rating Approach (FURA) was formulated to replace assumptions with a more on-the-ground understanding. Each home is evaluated based on fundamental physical characteristics—the strength of its materials, the design of its roof, the anchoring of its foundation and how it sits within its terrain.

When the model reflects the topography, structure and the way people actually live in Hawaii, the results are more than just accurate pricing. It creates fairer outcomes for both sides. Homeowners get coverage that matches the true nature of their property, and the risk is lowered for coverage gaps that are usually revealed only after a storm. Insurers gain clearer visibility into their risk portfolios, improving stability and predictability across the market.

Lessons from the Islands

Every breakthrough begins with listening. For HHG, that means letting the islands teach what decades of mainland modeling could not.

Drawing on years of insurance and underwriting experience in Hawaii, founders Steve Doucette and his son Cody Doucette set out to design a risk map and rating approach using meteorological, topographical and structural data that is specific to Hawaii. Their team used wind models alongside engineering and building code data to better understand how powerful storms moved across uneven terrain, how wind accelerated through valleys and mountainous terrain and how homes with different structural features responded to those forces.

One event, in particular, reshaped everything about Hurricane risk modeling in Hawaii. After Hurricane Iniki in 1992, “single-wall” homes, common throughout the islands, were widely labeled as uninsurable. But when Steve’s wife, an architect and engineer, examined the wreckage, a pattern emerged that told a different story. The walls weren’t the weakness; the foundations were. Many of those homes rested on unsecured piers with open foundations that gave way under the lift crested as strong winds passed underneath the structure—the effect is similar to the lift that allows airplanes to fly—causing the entire structure to be moved off the foundation and resulting in a total loss. The solution wasn’t to blacklist a home design, but to check the type of foundation and how well it was anchored.

That insight later became the foundation for HHG’s FURA.

“Our solution wasn’t built in isolation, either,” explains Steve. “We worked with Hawaii’s engineers and code writers to capture what national catastrophe models miss. The actuarial work connects each feature to real damageability, so the rate reflects how a home actually performs.”

Precision in a Place that Demands It

Hawaii is one of the few regions where hurricane coverage is separate from standard homeowners’ insurance. That distinction raises the stakes. Even a minor flaw in risk modeling can decide whether coverage remains attainable or slips out of reach.

HHG’s locally engineered model reached a defining moment in 2014 with the Hawaii State DOI’s approval of HHG’s Hurricane product, the first of its kind built entirely on FURA and incorporating topographical ‘wind speed up’ zones. What began as a method for reading the islands’ topography and identifying structural features that decreased damageability became a framework capable of reshaping how insurance value is defined.

HHG’s FURA approach and custom-built policy changed the conversation around fairness in Hawaii. Even long-standing obstacles, such as ordinance and law exclusions that punished older homes, were neutralized through careful policy design and rating precision.

The precision of the ‘FURA’ approach also opened doors that had long been closed. Properties once deemed uninsurable, especially along Hawaii’s coastlines, regained access to coverage that was both reasonably priced and genuinely protective. Through utilizing Hawaii-specific wind and structural data, HHG created a model that met both engineering logic and economic sense—an equilibrium that turned exclusion into opportunity.

Beneath it all lies quiet strength. Since 2020, the program has been underwritten by Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance, one of the world’s most stable carriers, rated A by AM Best. Supporting Hyundai Marine and Fire is a top-shelf reinsurance network that includes American Family, Swiss Re and Munich Re, all A-rated global leaders in reinsurance and catastrophe risk. Together, they anchor every HHG policy in the same financial resilience trusted across the largest insurance markets, proving that precision, when properly applied, becomes protection.

The Power of Staying Local

Decisions that are made from a distance can be costly. Operating as a Managing General Agent and Underwriter (MGA/MGU), HHG follows a principle grounded in being in close proximity, acting quickly and making adjustments when needed.

Every HHG team member calls Hawaii home and are licensed, so issues are resolved by people who understand both underwriting and the local environment. This locally based approach eliminates the friction that often exists between distant call centers on the mainland and policyholders, allowing for real-time decisions.

The same local logic shapes HHG’s partnerships. It works through a network of independent agencies across the islands, treating them as collaborators rather than channels. Those agents understand their communities, so they can tailor coverage that reflects the true structure of a home rather than trying to make the property fit into standardized products. The conversation shifts from what the product offers to what the property requires and the customer needs.

Take two homes on the same street. One is 50 years old but reinforced with modern clips and a solid, closed foundation. The other is newer but built with an open foundation and an unsecured roof.

In most rating models, age alone would make the older home more expensive to insure. HHG’s system measures actual structural strength, rewards resilience where it’s earned and removes credit where it’s not. That’s the power of proximity. Understanding how homes are built and how they’ve been maintained allows HHG to price coverage based on fact, not formula.

The Next Frontier

The same approach that reshaped hurricane coverage in Hawaii is now moving into broader territory. HHG has a homeowner’s product currently in filing that applies FURA across the full spectrum of perils, with particular attention to wildfire risk zones and to integrating wind zones into a single homeowners’ framework.

The product is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2026, creating a similar market shift for homeowners to the one HHG’s hurricane product created a decade earlier.

At the holding company level, the team has also established the Wildfire Insurance Solution Hub (WISH) to adapt the feature-based model to western wildfire markets. The focus now extends from individual homes to entire communities, using the same geospatial and feature-driven approach to understand how fires spread and cause damage.

Kitt Doucette, Steve’s son and Cody’s identical twin brother, is leading this push, taking the island-honed method to mainland conditions that need the same kind of local attention.

On the commercial side, HHG is exploring how its approach can support business properties for hurricane and fire exposures in Hawaii. The sequence involves learning what risks the structures face, identifying the structural and environmental features that matter, understanding local building codes and applicable engineering data to create data supported insurance products.

The Simplicity of Getting it Right

HHG’s story is less about policy design and more about what it reveals. Progress in complex systems comes from specificity, not from scale.

In mastering one of the most demanding environments to model, the company proved that local precision can outperform national generalization and that the future of resilience will depend on how well industries can adapt to micro realities, rather than macro assumptions.

HHG’s innovative approach and mindset reframes the role of insurance. It shows how to translate data into design and design into functional protection. It created a template for how one should always stay close to the context and let performance—not precedent—set the price.

That’s the simplicity of getting it right—not adding more variables, but asking better questions about the ones that already exist.