Ten or fifteen years ago, a Colorado homeowner with hail damage had a fairly simple path forward. The insurance company paid to replace the roof, even if that roof was worn out. The homeowner paid a $500 deductible and moved on.
That is not how it works anymore.
In a recent Roof Talk conversation, Excel Roofing founder J Bretz sat down with Scott Ponzio, 2026 President of the Colorado Roofing Association (CRA) and President of RTP Roofing, to talk through what has actually changed in Colorado homeowners insurance and what it means for anyone facing a roof replacement. Between them they have 64 years in Colorado roofing, and their answer was consistent: coverage is narrower, deductibles are far higher, and the choice of roofing material now carries financial weight it never used to.
Here is what homeowners need to understand.
The first change is the simplest one, and the one that catches most people off guard. Insurers have pulled back on what they will pay for an aging roof.
As J Bretz put it in the interview, if an asphalt roof is over ten years old, insurers are probably only going to pay about half of the coverage amount. That is not a denial, and it is not a dispute. It is the policy working the way it was written.
For a homeowner, the practical result is a gap. The roof needs full replacement, the claim check covers part of it, and the difference comes out of pocket on top of the deductible.
Most policies start out as replacement cost value, or RCV. An RCV policy pays what it costs to replace the roof today, with current materials and current labor.
After about seven years, many policies convert to actual cash value, or ACV. An ACV policy pays the depreciated value of the roof instead. A fifteen-year-old roof has fifteen years of wear priced into it, and the payout reflects that.
Homeowners rarely get a phone call when this switch happens. It is written into the policy from the beginning.
This is the single most useful question a Colorado homeowner can ask right now: is my policy RCV or ACV, and when does it change? Any quality roofer or insurance agent can answer it in about a minute, and the answer changes the entire financial picture of a future claim.
The deductible is where the math gets serious.
Percentage-based deductibles have replaced flat-dollar deductibles across much of the Colorado market. Instead of $500, homeowners are now seeing deductibles set at 1% to 5% of home value. On a $400,000 home, a 1% deductible is $4,000. At 2%, it is $8,000.
Scott Ponzio described what that actually means in the interview. Most people do not realize it, but at those levels the homeowner is being self-insured. The roof gets paid for out of pocket, whether or not a claim gets filed.
He was also fair about the other side of it. A lot of insurers have not made money in Colorado for a long time, and the state’s hail exposure is real. His view is that the market needs to find a balance, and that there is going to have to be a ceiling on where these deductibles land.
For homeowners, though, the takeaway is not theoretical. A roof replacement in Colorado is now a planned expense, not an insurance event.
When insurance covered full roof replacement, material choice was mostly about looks and preference. When the homeowner is carrying a large share of the cost, it becomes a long-term financial decision.
That is why impact-resistant products, stone-coated steel, and synthetic systems come up in almost every conversation about hail now. A roof that survives the next five hailstorms without a claim is worth more to a homeowner than one that qualifies for a claim the homeowner cannot afford to file.
There is no universal right answer. Pitch, elevation, neighborhood, and how long the homeowner plans to stay in the house all change the recommendation. Someone selling in two years is usually better served by a quality asphalt roof. Someone staying 20 years should be looking harder at the more durable systems.
The Colorado Roofing Association has been working on the policy side of these problems since 1978. Scott Ponzio described the legislative committee as one of the most difficult the association runs, because of the number of competing interests involved.
One of those competing interests surprises most homeowners. The Home Builders Association generally pushes for more relaxed rules, because looser requirements cost builders less. Roofing contractors and the CRA generally push the other direction, for better rules and tighter standards, because they are the ones who see what happens when a roof is installed poorly.
The association has also fought over retention, which is the practice of holding back contractor payment until every last item on a project is finished, down to the last blade of grass. Ponzio’s point was that retention rules that squeeze contractors tend to reach the consumer too, in the form of higher upfront money and added fees.
The largest recent development is Senate Bill 26-155, which created the Strengthen Colorado Homes Enterprise inside the Colorado Division of Insurance. It was signed on June 4th, 2026, and took effect August 12th, 2026.
The program collects an annual fee from admitted insurance companies that write homeowners policies in Colorado, then uses that money for grants toward resilient and impact-resistant roof systems. A seven-member board decides how the grant money is awarded, weighing things like whether the home is a primary residence, applicant income, the age of the roof, and whether the home sits in an area with a history of severe weather. The law also prohibits contractors who receive grant money from waiving homeowner deductibles.
Scott Ponzio’s concern in the interview was less about the concept and more about the administration. A large amount of money is going to be collected and distributed, and someone has to decide where it goes. He said the CRA has been talking with the state insurance commissioner about having a roofing industry seat at that table, the reasoning being that the people who install these systems should have a voice in the standards attached to them.
He also pointed out the terminology. The state describes the mechanism as an enterprise rather than a tax, and Ponzio’s view is that, it is a tax. Reasonable people land in different places on that, but homeowners should at least know the program exists and that it is funded, ultimately, out of the insurance market they buy into.
There is real interest right now in subsidizing Class 4 impact-resistant roofs, and in the insurance-backed Fortified program.
Ponzio’s assessment was measured. Class 4 roofs are good in general, but he and J Bretz both agree, they are not the silver bullet that solves the insurance problem, and believe Fortified still needs fine tuning. The deeper issue, in Scott's view, is affordability. If a homeowner cannot afford adequate coverage on the roof in the first place, a better roofing product does not fix that by itself.
That is an honest answer, and it is the kind of answer worth listening to from someone with no product to sell on either side of it.
Four practical steps come out of this conversation:
Homeowners can verify a contractor through the Colorado Roofing Association’s member directory at coloradoroofing.org. CRA membership requires insurance, time in the market, and agreement to a code of ethics, and members can be removed for how they treat customers.
As Ponzio put it at the end of the interview, anyone who gets information is going to make a better decision. That is the entire point.
Scott Ponzio is the CRA's 27th President and is the President of RTP Roofing in Sheridan Colorado.
Not always, and less often than it used to. Coverage has been reduced on older roofs. If an asphalt roof is over ten years old, many Colorado insurers now pay roughly half of the coverage amount rather than the full replacement cost.
Replacement cost value (RCV) pays what it costs to replace the roof today. Actual cash value (ACV) pays the depreciated value of the roof based on its age and condition. Many policies begin as RCV and convert to ACV after about seven years.
Percentage-based deductibles of 1% to 5% of home value are now common. On a $400,000 home that is $4,000 to $20,000, compared with the flat $500 deductibles that were standard ten to fifteen years ago.
It means the deductible is high enough that the homeowner effectively pays for the roof out of pocket. When a deductible approaches the cost of the replacement itself, filing a claim stops producing a meaningful payout.
Class 4 roofs perform well against hail and can qualify for insurance discounts, but CRA President Scott Ponzio cautions that they are not a complete solution to Colorado’s insurance affordability problem. They are one part of a larger decision that also includes pitch, elevation, and how long the homeowner plans to stay in the home.
Senate Bill 26-155 created the Strengthen Colorado Homes Enterprise within the Colorado Division of Insurance, effective August 12th, 2026. It collects an annual fee from homeowners insurers and awards grants toward resilient and impact-resistant roof systems, with priority criteria that include primary residence status, applicant income, and roof age.
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