For the second consecutive year, Housing Partnership Insurance Exchange (HPIEx) made a distribution to subscribers totaling $1 million. The distribution was announced at the HPIEx annual meeting held in Burlington, Vermont, on September 28th, which was attended by representatives of 16 of the 20 subscribers.

Launched in April 2004, HPIEx is jointly owned by the Housing Partnership Network and 19 members, including two organizations that joined this year--REACH Community Development of Portland, Oregon, and Boston-based Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH). The company currently provides property and liability insurance for 45,000 rental homes throughout the country, with premiums totaling $11 million. Now in its sixth year of operation, HPIEx has enjoyed very strong performance, has a robust cash position, and has a premium to surplus ratio of 1.16 to 1, almost twice the industry benchmark.

HPIEx has operated profitably from the start, consistently maintaining individual and collective liability and property losses that are 30-40% lower than those of the average apartment property owner. Despite this successful record, the company continues to emphasize loss mitigation, which was an important focus of this year’s annual meeting. Awards for best loss experience and risk management efforts from inception through 2008 were presented in three categories. In the category of subscribers with more than 2,500 units, BRIDGE Housing Corporation of San Francisco took the honors. For mid-sized groups—1,000 to 2,500 units—Aeon of Minneapolis and The Housing Partnership of Charlotte-Mecklenburg shared the award. And in the under 1,000 unit category it went to the Caleb Foundation, based in Swampscott, Massachusetts.

“We want to incentivize good performance,” said HPIEx General Manager Bill Kelsey. “And we also want to ensure that best practices are shared and that members learn from one another. So over the next few months we will be formalizing ways for this exchange of information to take place. We want to do everything possible to ensure that HPIEx enables our members to deliver better services to their communities while remaining profitable and continuing to make annual distributions.”