Your Client’s Roof Now Has a Score

How a broker explains aerial property scoring to homeowners — before renewal explains it to them

In October 2026, Donegal Insurance Group expanded its deal with ZestyAI, adding a product called Z-PROPERTY across its personal lines book. Donegal is one regional carrier, but the pattern is industry-wide: carriers are scoring the outside of your clients’ homes from aerial imagery, and the score is in the file long before renewal arrives.

The broker’s problem is timing. The homeowner usually learns about aerial scoring from a nonrenewal letter, a repair demand, or a premium change — the worst possible first conversation. The broker who explains the score early owns the conversation; the broker who waits gets to explain the letter.

What gets scored

ZestyAI builds Z-PROPERTY from high-resolution aerial imagery — overhead, angled, and 3D views — analyzed by computer vision models, per the company’s product pages. It reports roof condition in five classes, from sound to degraded, and flags the specific issues behind the class: staining, water ponding, missing shingles, and tarps.

The roof is not the whole picture. The same product detects roof material, shape, and complexity, and then looks at the lot: vegetation and overhanging trees, debris, pools, secondary structures, and driveways. What the homeowner thinks of as housekeeping — a brush pile, a project car, a tree that needs trimming — can read to a model as exposure.

The file also carries history. Donegal first adopted ZestyAI’s Roof Age in 2025: permit records plus more than 20 years of historical aerial imagery, used to establish when a roof was actually replaced. A carrier running both products holds a dated timeline of the property, not a snapshot.

Where the score touches the policy

ZestyAI markets the data for underwriting, rating, and renewals, and says carriers can match deductibles, ACV treatments, and pricing tiers to verified roof condition. Translated for a homeowner: the score can influence what the roof costs to insure, how it is settled after a claim, and whether the carrier wants changes before it renews.

Renewal is where clients feel it first. ZestyAI sells its property data as a way to detect property changes at renewal, so a roof that aged, a tarp that appeared, or debris that accumulated can surface as a condition of renewal — repair it, document it, or shop the risk. None of that is a reason for a client to panic. All of it is a reason the client should hear it from you first.

What a homeowner can correct

A score built from imagery can be wrong, outdated, or attached to the wrong facts. The imagery may predate a roof replacement. A shadow can read as damage. A neighbour’s property can be confused with the client’s. A tarp from a repaired, closed claim can linger in the record as if it were current condition. Consumer advocates who track these cases, such as United Policyholders, report a steady rise in disputes of exactly this kind.

The correction path is evidence, and it works best in writing. The sequence to give every client:

• Ask for the basis. Request the image, its date, and the specific condition the carrier relied on. A client cannot correct a record they have not seen.
• Answer with dated proof. A licensed roofer’s written inspection, the replacement invoice and permit, repair receipts, and current dated photos address the record point by point.
• Put the correction in writing. Ask the carrier to reconsider on the evidence, and keep the paper trail. Verbal assurances do not update underwriting files.
• Ask for time when the finding is real. If the roof genuinely needs work, a reasonable cure period is a normal ask — and a better outcome than a lapse.
• Escalate if the record stays wrong. If the carrier will not explain or correct a clear error, the state insurance department is the next stop, and it wants to hear about these cases.

Rules on notice periods and disclosure vary by state, so keep the advice procedural rather than legal — or bring in the state-specific answer when you give it. (The governance side of algorithmic underwriting — what regulators are asking of these models — is covered in Risk Coverage Hub’s AI governance in insurance briefing.)

The conversation to have now

The cheapest time to fix a property record is before it prices a renewal. Walk homeowner clients through three things at the next review: what the carrier can now see from the air, which low-cost items — debris, overhang, a tired roof surface — are worth addressing before they are scored, and what proof to keep when work is done: invoices, permits, and dated photos, filed where the client can find them.

A broker who can explain the score becomes the person the client calls when the letter arrives — and by then it is a service conversation, not a rescue. Carriers will keep buying better views of the properties they insure; ZestyAI’s October 2026 announcement is one entry in a year of them. The broker’s answer is not to fight the camera. It is to make sure the client’s own record is better than the camera’s.

The contractor-side read of the same announcement — what the carrier’s record means at claim time — is on Restoration Intel: The Carrier Already Has Photos of the Roof.

Sources: ZestyAI announcement (October 2026) and product pages; United Policyholders guidance on aerial-imagery disputes. Product figures are vendor-stated.

Updated Nov 1, 2026 — added the free aerial roof score quick card, aerial score broker pack, and aerial property score bot book downloads to this guide.