# How does a wind and hail deductible work on a roof claim? A deductible is what you pay before the insurer pays anything. On wind and hail it is frequently a percentage of your dwelling coverage limit rather than a flat sum, and those two behave completely differently. Two percent on a $400,000 dwelling is $8,000, which on a moderate claim can exceed the entire payment. ## Flat or percentage — which do I have? Look at your declarations page. There will often be two figures: an all-perils deductible, usually flat, and a separate wind and hail deductible, frequently expressed as a percentage. A **flat deductible** is a dollar amount. $1,000 means $1,000. A **percentage deductible** is a percentage of the **dwelling coverage limit** — Coverage A — not a percentage of the claim. This is the part people get wrong, and it is not a small difference. On a $400,000 dwelling limit: - 1% = $4,000 - 2% = $8,000 - 5% = $20,000 If your roof claim comes in at $14,000 and you have a 2% wind and hail deductible, you receive $6,000 before depreciation, not $13,000. Percentage deductibles became common in hail-prone and coastal states as carriers moved catastrophe risk back onto policyholders. Many homeowners acquired one at a renewal without noticing. ## When does the wind and hail deductible apply instead of the standard one? When the cause of loss is wind or hail. That is usually the entire question, and it is usually not ambiguous — but it can be. A tree falling on your roof during a windstorm may be classed as wind. Hail damage discovered months later still attaches to the hail event. A leak from a failed pipe boot is neither, so the standard deductible applies. Some states require carriers to trigger a percentage deductible only on a **declared** catastrophe or named storm rather than on any wind event. That is state law and it varies, so check with your state department of insurance rather than assuming. ## Should I file if the claim is close to my deductible? Usually not, and this is worth being blunt about. A claim below the deductible pays nothing and still goes on your loss history. A claim slightly above it pays very little and goes on your record all the same. Carriers use claim history in renewal and pricing decisions, and in hail-prone regions repeat claims are a common reason for **non-renewal** — which can leave you shopping for coverage in a market that has already priced in your roof. Run the numbers before you file. Take the likely replacement cost, subtract depreciation for your roof's age, subtract the deductible, and see what is actually left. The [claim value estimator](/calculators/insurance-claim-value/) does it. We are not telling you to file or not to file. We do not sell roofs and we do not sell leads, so we have no stake in the answer. We are telling you to do the arithmetic first, because a surprising number of claims that get filed were never going to pay. ## What about the offer to waive my deductible? Do not take it. This is the most important paragraph on this page. After a hailstorm, contractors canvassing door to door routinely offer to waive, absorb or "eat" your deductible. In most states this is **insurance fraud**, and a number of states have statutes addressing it explicitly. It is not a grey area and it is not a discount. The mechanism is always the same: the contractor inflates the claim to the carrier by roughly your deductible, so the carrier funds your share. That is a false statement to an insurer, and the policyholder who accepted the arrangement is a party to it — not just the contractor who proposed it. The practical exposure to you includes denial of the claim, cancellation of the policy, recovery of amounts already paid, and in some states criminal liability. Meanwhile the contractor who proposed it has demonstrated exactly how they treat paperwork. Notice how the offer is usually phrased. Almost nobody says "let us commit fraud together". They say they will work with you on it, or handle it, or do some extra work to make up the difference. The red flags below cover the common wordings. ## Can I finance the deductible instead? Yes, and there is nothing wrong with it. Paying your own deductible from savings, a payment plan, or a loan is the normal, legal way to cover it. A contractor offering a genuine payment plan for *your* portion — documented, and not billed to the carrier — is doing something entirely different from offering to make it disappear. The test is simple: does the invoice the insurer receives reflect the true price of the work, including your share? If yes, it is financing. If no, it is fraud. ## Common mistakes - **Assuming the percentage applies to the claim.** It applies to the dwelling limit. This is the single most common misreading of a declarations page. - **Discovering your deductible after the storm.** Read it now. The difference between $1,000 flat and 2% of dwelling can be seven thousand dollars, and it changes whether filing makes sense at all. - **Filing a claim that will not clear the deductible.** No payment, and a claim on your record anyway. - **Treating a waiver offer as a discount.** It is a proposal that you participate in fraud, and it exposes you. - **Not asking what appears on the carrier's invoice.** That document is where a waiver becomes visible, and it is the one you should ask to see.