Every roofing contractor has a theory about insurance carriers. Almost none of them has data. The industry runs on a folklore of which carriers are "good," which adjusters are "fair," and what a claim is "supposed" to pay — assembled from a handful of memorable jobs, mostly the bad ones, and passed around at trade shows until it hardens into fact.
This report replaces the folklore where we can. It draws on anonymized, aggregated outcomes from 2,400+ tracked hail and wind roof claims in the HailMate network during 2025, representing roughly $1.9 billion in storm restoration revenue, combined with a survey of 247 roofing companies running insurance restoration work. Carriers are reported by type rather than by name, both because our sample is not large enough to make fair company-level claims and because a report that named names would be read as a scorecard it cannot honestly support.
Use it to set expectations and to find leverage. Most of what separates a full-pay claim from a short-paid one turns out to happen before the adjuster arrives, which means most of it is inside a contractor's control.
What Actually Happens to a Roof Claim
| First-pass outcome | Share of claims |
|---|---|
| Approved, full replacement, paid to documented scope | 31% |
| Approved, but short-paid vs. documented scope | 34% |
| Approved for repair only | 16% |
| Denied | 14% |
| Withdrawn before decision | 5% |
The headline that matters is the second row. The most common outcome of a roof claim is not approval or denial — it is partial payment. A third of all claims come back approved, with a check attached, and short of what the documented scope supports. Those claims feel like wins on the day they arrive and quietly cost the company money for the rest of the job.
That is why denial rate is the wrong metric to manage. A company obsessing over its 14% denial rate while accepting every short-pay at face value is watching the smaller of the two leaks. The remedy for the second row is supplementing, and the industry's performance there is documented in our complete guide to roofing supplements and roofing supplement benchmarks.
Outcomes by Carrier Type
We grouped carriers into three types rather than naming them: national (the large multi-line writers), regional and mutual (state and multi-state carriers, including farm bureaus), and specialty and surplus (non-admitted, high-risk and last-resort writers).
| Carrier type | Share of claims | Full approval | Short-paid | Denied | Median days to first check |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| National | 58% | 29% | 38% | 13% | 34 |
| Regional / mutual | 31% | 38% | 27% | 12% | 41 |
| Specialty / surplus | 11% | 22% | 31% | 24% | 57 |
Three patterns hold up. National carriers pay fastest and short-pay most — a consequence of high-volume scoping workflows and heavier use of third-party estimating standards. Regional and mutual carriers approve fully more often and move slower, with more locally assigned adjusters and more discretion. Specialty and surplus carriers deny at roughly twice the rate of everyone else and take three weeks longer to pay, which is what you would expect from books concentrated in older roofs and higher-risk properties.
The practical read: a contractor's supplementing process matters most on national-carrier claims, and their patience and documentation matter most on surplus-lines claims. Neither carrier type is "bad" — they fail in different directions, and a company that treats every claim identically is optimizing for neither.
The Short-Pay Gap
Among short-paid claims, the average gap between the documented scope and the carrier's first approved amount was $4,780. Here is where it came from.
| Cause of the gap | Share of short-paid $ | Median gap when present |
|---|---|---|
| Code / ordinance items omitted (ice & water, drip edge) | 26% | $1,240 |
| Overhead & profit omitted or denied | 23% | $1,690 |
| Steep / high access understated | 17% | $780 |
| Depreciation applied beyond policy schedule | 15% | $1,120 |
| Detached structures & accessories omitted | 11% | $640 |
| Disposal, permits, misc. | 8% | $390 |
None of these is a coverage dispute. Every row is a line item that either was not itemized or was itemized at the wrong quantity — which is why the recovery rate on properly documented supplement requests is so high, and why the companies that supplement systematically capture roughly 40% more revenue per job. The line-item detail is in Xactimate line items roofers miss most and overhead and profit on roofing claims, and the mechanism for catching them before the estimate is finalized is a supplement engine.
A worked example
A company running 200 claims a year at the outcome distribution above:
| Line | Figure |
|---|---|
| Claims short-paid (34%) | 68 |
| Average gap per short-paid claim | $4,780 |
| Total gap exposed | $325,000 |
| Recovered at a median 31% supplement rate | $101,000 |
| Recovered at a top-quartile 70% supplement rate | $227,500 |
| Difference | $126,500/yr |
Same 200 claims, same storms, same carriers. The $126,500 is entirely a function of whether requesting the missing line items is a habit or an afterthought.
Repair vs. Replace
The 16% repair-only row above is worth its own table, because it is the outcome most likely to be reversible.
| Factor | Share of repair-only outcomes where present |
|---|---|
| Damage counted below the carrier's per-square threshold | 41% |
| Test square placement disputed | 22% |
| Matching / discontinued shingle not raised | 19% |
| Roof age / depreciation schedule invoked | 11% |
| Slope-by-slope rather than whole-roof scope | 7% |
Roughly one repair-only decision in five turned on matching — whether a repaired section can reasonably match the undamaged remainder — and that is a legal question with real answers that vary by state. Many states have line-of-sight or uniform-appearance provisions that convert a repair into a replacement when matching is not achievable. We cover the state-by-state picture in roof matching and line-of-sight laws.
The first two rows, at 63% combined, come down to test squares: where they were placed, how many, and whether both parties documented the same ones. That is a preventable dispute, and preventing it means being on the roof with the adjuster — see what an insurance adjuster looks for on your roof and the roofing inspection checklist.
Deductibles Are Doing More Work Than They Used To
| Deductible structure | Share of policies in sample | Median effective deductible |
|---|---|---|
| Flat dollar, all perils | 44% | $1,500 |
| Percentage wind/hail (1%) | 27% | $3,400 |
| Percentage wind/hail (2%) | 19% | $6,800 |
| Percentage wind/hail (2.5%+) | 10% | $9,100 |
Fifty-six percent of policies in our sample carried a percentage-based wind and hail deductible, and the median effective amount on the 2%+ tiers is high enough to change the arithmetic on a typical claim. A $14,600 job against a $9,100 deductible is a very different conversation from the same job against $1,500.
This is the single biggest change in the economics of this industry over the last several years, and it flows straight through to the homeowner behavior in The Homeowner Storm Damage Report 2026, where 29% of non-filers cited the deductible directly. It also makes deductible handling a legal minefield: offering to absorb or waive it is prohibited in many states, and it is the third-biggest trust killer homeowners named. ACV vs. RCV on a roof claim covers how the deductible interacts with depreciation.
Reinspection and Appraisal
| Escalation path | Invoked on | Improved the award | Median added $ | Median added days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supplement request (documented) | 31% of claims | 74% | $4,250 | 9 |
| Reinspection request | 9% of claims | 58% | $3,900 | 21 |
| Engineer / third-party report | 5% of claims | 44% | $6,100 | 34 |
| Appraisal | 4% of disputed claims | 70% | $9,800 | 68 |
Read that table top to bottom: the cheapest escalation is also the most likely to work. A documented supplement request succeeds three quarters of the time and adds nine days. Appraisal succeeds seventy percent of the time and adds more than two months, plus the cost of your own appraiser.
The implication is that most companies escalate too late rather than too aggressively. The supplement row is the one to max out first, and it is the row where the industry median performance is worst — 31% of claims, against top-quartile companies running over 70%. Appraisal is a real tool and a legitimate policy right; it is just an expensive substitute for paperwork you could have filed in week two. How to write roofing supplements that get approved is the practical version.
State insurance regulators publish complaint and settlement data that is worth knowing alongside this — the NAIC's consumer resources are the entry point, and every state has a department of insurance complaint process.
Days to Pay
| Milestone | Median | Post-catastrophe surge |
|---|---|---|
| Filing → adjuster inspection | 11 days | 26 days |
| Filing → first (ACV) check | 38 days | 61 days |
| Supplement submitted → decision | 14 days | 29 days |
| Install complete → final invoice sent | 6 days | 6 days |
| Filing → final (recoverable depreciation) payment | 74 days | 108 days |
A post-catastrophe surge adds roughly five weeks to a claim, end to end. The binding constraint is adjuster availability, not carrier willingness, and it is entirely predictable — a major metro event guarantees it. Companies that plan cash flow on median timelines get caught every time a big storm lands in their own market, which is precisely when their job volume is highest.
The last row is where the most money gets stranded. Recoverable depreciation is owed once the work is complete and documented, but it only arrives if somebody invoices for it and chases it — top-quartile companies collected it on 82% of eligible jobs against a 61% median, which on a $14,600 job is $3,000–$5,000 per claim of already-earned margin. The mechanics are in recoverable depreciation and collecting the second check, and tracking which checks are owed is the job of insurance check tracking and revenue collections.
What Moves an Outcome
Holding carrier type, storm severity and region constant, these documented practices correlated with better first-pass outcomes.
| Practice | Lift in full-approval rate |
|---|---|
| Contractor present at adjuster inspection | +19 pts |
| Carrier-specific photo checklist completed pre-inspection | +14 pts |
| Contractor estimate submitted before adjuster scope | +11 pts |
| Test squares documented and shared in advance | +9 pts |
| Supplement filed within 14 days of first scope | +8 pts |
Being on the roof is worth more than everything else on the list. It is also free. The rest of the table is documentation discipline, which is the same finding that shows up in the denial data — 53% of denials trace to documentation and causation, both controllable at inspection time rather than after the fact. See why roofing claims get denied, how to read a scope of loss, and the full storm damage claims process. Automating the photo requirement is the premise of photo intelligence, and running the whole file in one place is claims workflow and insurance claims management.
Methodology
This report combines anonymized, aggregated outcome data from 2,400+ tracked hail and wind residential roof claims in the HailMate network during the 2025 calendar year, representing roughly $1.9 billion in storm restoration revenue, with a 2026 survey of 247 insurance restoration roofing companies.
Carriers are grouped into three types rather than identified. Assignment to a type was made from carrier licensing structure and market role, not from outcome data, so the groupings are not constructed to produce the differences reported. Our sample is drawn from contractors using a restoration-focused platform and therefore over-represents companies that document and supplement actively; absolute approval rates in the broader market are likely lower and short-pay rates higher than reported here.
"Short-paid" means approved for an amount below the contractor's documented scope at first pass, not below the final settled amount. "Full approval" means paid to documented scope without a subsequent supplement being required. The practice-lift table reports correlations within our dataset after controlling for carrier type, storm severity and region; correlation is not causation and companies that do these things differ in other ways too.
Deductible structure is drawn from declarations pages shared with contractors on tracked jobs and is not a representative sample of US homeowners policies. Claim timelines are measured from tracked events rather than self-report. Worked examples are illustrative and use the medians stated above. Nothing here is legal or insurance advice; claim handling rules, matching statutes and public adjusting requirements vary by state.
Related Reading
- Why Roofing Claims Get Denied — prevention for the 14% denial row above.
- Complete Guide to Roofing Supplements — the remedy for the 34% short-pay row.
- The State of Storm Restoration Roofing 2026 — the operational benchmarks these outcomes feed into.
This report is for informational purposes only and is not legal or insurance advice.