If your home is built or re-roofed to the FORTIFIED standard — and certified — you could earn a discount. If you're about to replace a roof anyway, read this first, because the best moment to certify is exactly then.
FORTIFIED is a construction standard from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), the industry's research lab — the people who build houses inside giant wind chambers and destroy them for science. A FORTIFIED home is built to better resist high wind and severe weather. You earn the discount by providing proof that your home is certified to one of the FORTIFIED designation levels.
Certification runs through the designation levels — the roof-focused level is the practical entry point for most existing homes, since it's earned during a re-roof by using specific fastening, sealing and edge details that cost little extra when the roof is open anyway.
Hail totals your roof and the insurance claim is paying for a new one anyway. This is likely the cheapest moment you will ever have to build to the FORTIFIED standard — the deck is exposed, so the sealed seams, upgraded fastening and locked-down edges that earn the designation cost far less than they would as a stand-alone project. You ask your roofer for a FORTIFIED-trained installer and line up an IBHS evaluator before the tear-off. The roof goes on once, the evaluator documents it, the certificate arrives, and with proof in hand the discount can be applied going forward.
