Cost & Value
Do metal roofs lower home insurance in Ontario?
Sometimes, modestly, and not with every insurer. Here is what Ontario insurers actually rate on, what to ask your broker, and why the roof matters more at claim time than at renewal.
By Charles · · 8 min read
Sometimes. Modestly. Not with every insurer, and rarely by enough to change the decision on its own.
We are being blunt about that because this claim gets badly oversold. If a roofer is leading with insurance savings, they are selling you the weakest part of a genuinely strong case.
What is true — and more useful — is that your roof affects whether you can get covered, on what terms, and what happens at claim time. That is worth more than a discount.
What Ontario insurers actually rate on
Roof material is one input among several, and it is usually not the biggest.
Roof age and remaining life. This is the dominant factor. Many Ontario insurers now ask directly, and some will refuse to write a policy, exclude the roof, or move you to actual-cash-value settlement on a roof past a certain age. Twenty years is a common trigger for asphalt; some are tightening further.
Material class. Steel is non-combustible and carries a Class A fire rating in a typical assembly. Some insurers reflect that. Some do not differentiate at all.
Wind and hail performance. Increasingly relevant. Ontario has seen a run of severe convective storm losses and insurers have noticed.
Where you are. Rural properties beyond a set distance from a fire hall, or in a high-hail corridor, get rated differently — and the roof carries more weight in those calculations.
Claims history on the property. A previous water-ingress claim changes the conversation entirely.
The saving, honestly
Where a discount exists, it is typically a modest percentage of the property portion of your premium — not of the whole policy, and not transformative.
Anyone quoting you a specific percentage without knowing your insurer is repeating something they read. Ontario is not a single market; carriers price this differently and change their appetite year to year.
Treat it as a nice side effect. Not a payback calculation.
Where the roof really pays off with insurers
Three places, and none of them are the renewal notice.
1. Staying insurable
This is the one that is quietly becoming a problem across Ontario. An ageing asphalt roof is now a live underwriting question. Homeowners with 22-year-old shingles are getting non-renewal notices, coverage exclusions, or demands to replace within 60 days.
A roof with decades of documented life ahead simply removes that whole category of problem. That is not a discount — it is optionality.
2. Settlement basis
This one costs people real money and almost nobody asks about it.
Insurers settle roof claims either at replacement cost (they pay to put a new roof on) or actual cash value (they pay depreciated value — a 20-year-old asphalt roof might settle at a fraction of replacement).
Older roofs frequently get moved to ACV. If a storm takes your roof and you are on ACV, you are covering a large share of the replacement yourself.
Ask your broker which basis your roof is on. It is the single most valuable question in this article.
3. Fewer claims in the first place
The cheapest claim is the one that never happens. Concealed-fastener metal removes the failure modes behind most slow water ingress — no washers to harden, no laps for ice-dam meltwater to back up under. Fewer claims means a cleaner history, and history is what prices your next renewal.
What to actually ask your broker
Take these to a phone call. Ten minutes, and it is worth doing before you commit to a roof.
- Do you offer any credit for a steel or standing seam roof?
- Is my roof currently settled on replacement cost or actual cash value?
- At what roof age does that change?
- Does a new roof change my settlement basis back to replacement cost?
- Do you need documentation — invoice, spec, photos — to update the file?
- Does my policy have a separate wind or hail deductible?
Question 4 is often where the real money is. Moving from ACV back to replacement cost can be worth far more at claim time than any premium credit is worth over a decade.
Documentation your insurer will want
Whatever you install, keep a file. It costs nothing now and matters enormously later:
- The invoice with the install date
- The written specification — gauge, seam type, finish, underlayment
- Manufacturer warranty documents for the coil and finish
- Photos of the completed roof from each elevation
- Any inspection report from before or after
We supply the specification and warranty paperwork as standard, and we are happy to provide photos for your file. If you want a documented condition report — for a policy renewal, a claim, or a sale — that is something we do as a standalone service.
What not to do
Do not tell your insurer a metal roof means you can skip inspections. They will still expect reasonable maintenance, and so will the policy wording.
Do not assume a metal roof means hail is a non-issue. 24 gauge handles Ontario hail well cosmetically, but severe events happen and coverage still matters.
Do not let a contractor put insurance savings in the sales pitch as a number. They do not know your carrier, your postcode, or your claims history.
The honest summary
Will a metal roof cut your premium? Possibly a little. Ask your broker rather than your roofer.
Will it stop your insurer getting nervous about your roof for the next several decades, and keep you on replacement-cost settlement? That is the real benefit, and it is worth considerably more than the discount.
If you want a documented roof specification for your insurance file, or a condition report on what is up there now, call 705-816-5282 or get in touch.