IBHS and IBHS Programs – Wildfire Prepared
Published November 17, 2025
The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety or IBHS may be one of the more important organizations that you’ve never heard of. This organization was formed in 1977 to understand and reduce risk associated with natural disasters. This includes hurricanes, wind driven events, flooding, hail and most recently, wildfire related risks.
It’s no secret that it’s increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain insurance. This is driven by the numbers around risk and loss. Ultimately, the Combined Ratio is the driving factor:
Combine Ratio = Underwriting loss ratio + Expense ratio
More losses and more expenses means a worsening combined ratio and that means more costly and less access to insurance. The work of IBHS is centered around reducing losses and keeping costs down. It’s no secret, especially in Colorado, that wildfire is a nearly year round threat. Nationally, the losses in most years run into the billions of dollars. IBHS has a program that can have a big impact on wildfire survivability. It’s particularly appropriate for new construction. It takes planning of course but we think it’s worth exploring.
The Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood Standard outlines what it takes:
https://wildfireprepared.org/wp-content/uploads/Wildfire-Prepared-Neighborhood-Standard-2025.pdf
Without delving too deeply into the standard, there are individual home aspects and there are neighborhood level aspects. Taken together, they make for significantly more defensible and survivable neighborhoods.
EnergyLogic will be working with the Wildfire Prepared program in 2026 to bring more information to our partners.
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