What do you need to know?
Most importantly, with many insurance companies, each year your roof loses additional coverage. So after five years, you might get paid 80% of the loss, but after 10 years that drops to 60%, and then 40% by year 15 and so on.

Every company has their own depreciation schedule and their own restrictions. For example, some insurers only reduce your payment if the loss is due to wind or hail while others do it for any cause of loss.

The important thing is hardly any insurers prominently disclose this information with your renewal. You need to ask for help to find this information.

What else?
Many insurers have higher deductibles for wind and hail losses, so not only is your eligible claim reduced, you have to then pay a higher deductible.

Thus, if you have a $1000 deductible and a $20,000 roof claim, you might expect insurance to pay $19,000.

However, if your roof coverage is only 50%, only $10,000 is eligible and if your deductible is $4000 for wind losses, then insurance will only pay $6,000.

The double blow of wind deductibles and reduced roof coverage can leave you with a much higher than expected payment.

There’s one more thing you should know about. Many insurers don’t have to repair your roof with the same materials you had prior. 

Imagine you needed ⅓ of your roof replaced. How would you feel if that third looked completely different than the rest of your roof?

If your insurer doesn’t guarantee “matching” coverage, this could happen to you. If you are concerned about this, make sure you ask the insurer if they provide matching coverage.

Why did insurers push through all these changes?
Roof claims have increased materially over the years due to increased weather events compounded by the opportunistic behavior of some roofing companies.

Roofers promise homeowners they can get them new roofs - even when they’re not needed - and get the insurance company to pay since it is difficult for the insurer to separate age related problems from actual storm damage.

Rather than find ways to crack down on certain roofers or raise prices to account for the increased risk, insurers decided it was easier to take away coverage and leave the customer to deal with the problem.

Worse, they didn’t bother to tell you about it, so most homeowners are unaware that they are now exposed to increased risk.

If you need help figuring out what roof coverage you have and whether you can find better options, please reach out and we’re glad to review your policy for you.