Kentucky's new FORTIFIED roof rider must be offered on houses — not on your condo master policy
Kentucky's new FORTIFIED roof rider must be offered on houses — not on your condo master policy
2026-09-10 · Kentucky · Regulation
What happened. Kentucky put wind and hail resilience into its insurance code. House Bill 527, signed by the Governor on 7 April 2026 as 2026 Ky. Acts ch. 45, does two separate things: it requires insurers to offer a roof-upgrade rider on certain homes, and it creates a state grant programme to pay for resilience work.1
The two halves do not cover the same buildings, and for a Kentucky condominium association the difference decides everything.
The rider: single-family dwellings only
Section 22 amends KRS 304.13-346. The duty it creates is narrow and the words are the reason:
“All insurance companies writing property insurance for personal risks that provides coverage of any single-family dwelling located in Kentucky that is a non-FORTIFIED dwelling shall offer an optional rider, endorsement, or supplemental policy provision that provides the insured a right to receive claim payments for the cost to upgrade the single-family dwelling for any claim that: (a) Is covered under the insurance policy or contract; and (b) Requires replacement of the covered dwelling's roof as defined by the insurance policy or contract.”
A “non-FORTIFIED dwelling” is one whose roof structure does not comply with the most recent FORTIFIED Home roof structure standards published by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety. The “cost to upgrade” is the cost of bringing that roof up to those standards.
Two limits sit on the face of the text. The insurer must offer the rider — nothing requires the insured to buy it, and nothing sets its price. And it attaches to personal-risk property insurance on a single-family dwelling. A condominium master policy is neither.
The grant programme: multifamily is in
Section 5 of the Act rewrites KRS 304.2-450 to create the Strengthen Kentucky Homes Program, and its scope is wider:
“The Strengthen Kentucky Homes Program is hereby created for the purpose of providing financial grants to real property owners, SKH approved contractors, and nonprofit organizations to assist and promote the mitigation of insurable dwellings to resist losses due to catastrophic wind and hail events in accordance with FORTIFIED construction standards published by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety or a successor entity.”
The defined term is what matters. An “insurable dwelling” means a dwelling on or affixed to residential real estate, and it expressly “includes a single-family or multifamily dwelling, including a modular home.” The regulations the Commissioner must write are to require compliance with “the most recent version of any applicable FORTIFIED Home or FORTIFIED Multifamily construction standards.”
The Act carries an emergency clause for Section 5, so the grant programme provision took effect on the Governor's approval on 7 April 2026.
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