The squeeze this creates for association claims

Take the year's Kentucky insurance developments together and a pattern emerges that a board can plan around rather than discover.

Nonrenewals are being driven by imagery. In March 2026 the Department of Insurance issued Bulletin 2026-01 telling every property and casualty insurer that satellite imagery may not be the sole basis for a cancellation, nonrenewal or claim denial, and that images of a roof showing streaking or discolouration are not enough on their own. The Department issued that guidance because the practice is widespread.

The statutory roof-upgrade rider does not reach you. HB 527's mandatory FORTIFIED roof rider attaches to personal-risk property insurance on a single-family dwelling. A condominium master policy is outside it.

And now the pool of people who help you argue a claim is frozen. A two-year moratorium does not remove existing adjusters, but it removes competitive entry at exactly the point where Kentucky associations are contesting more claims, not fewer.

The practical consequence is that an association's leverage in a disputed master-policy claim now depends more on the quality of its own documentation and less on being able to shop for representation.

A board's options before the next loss

• Identify your adjuster now, not after the storm. With no new licences issuing, the established practitioners will be busiest precisely when a regional weather event puts every association in the market at once. A board that waits until the loss is competing for a smaller pool.
• Verify the licence. The moratorium makes unlicensed practice more likely, not less — there is now a queue of people who cannot get licensed. Check the licence with the Department of Insurance before signing anything.
• Understand the rescission period. An adjuster may not provide services until it has run. An adjuster who starts work the day the contract is signed is not complying with the Act, and a contract that fails the Act's requirements is unenforceable.
• Do not sign the contractor and the adjuster together. The Act bars public adjusters from affiliating with contractors who solicit claim business. A single visit offering both is the arrangement the legislature just prohibited.
• Read the fee. Percentage-of-recovery arrangements on a large master-policy claim reach substantial sums, and the association's authority to enter that engagement runs through its declaration and its board's spending powers, not through the adjuster's form.

How this connects to the contractor rules

HB 568 is one part of a scheme the General Assembly has been assembling over three sessions, and boards benefit from seeing it whole.

HB 233 (2025) rewrote KRS 367.620 to 367.628, expanding a scheme that had reached only residential property of one to four families and only roofing contractors. “Real estate” now means “any parcel of real estate located in this state that is used for any purpose” — which brings condominium buildings and association common elements inside it. It gives the insured a right to cancel “prior to midnight of the fifth business day after the person has received written notice from the insurer that all or part of the claim is not a covered loss,” and bars a contractor from filing a mechanic's lien “by reason of the insured's failure or refusal to pay any excess charge over and above the amount paid or expected to be paid by an insurer.”

SB 153 (2026), effective 15 July 2026, tightened it further: an assignment-of-benefits notice before contracting, no unenforceable cancellation fees, restrictions on contractor marketing, and certain violations made a fraudulent insurance act under KRS 304.47-020 and first-degree criminal mischief.

And the Attorney General has now proposed 40 KAR 12:450, which would require contractors working in a declared emergency area to register first, post $200,000 of liability cover or a bond, and name a person in control. Written comments on that regulation close on 30 September 2026.

What to watch next

The moratorium runs two years from the Act's effective date, so the question for 2028 is whether it is extended, allowed to lapse, or replaced with tighter licensing standards. Nothing in the Act commits the legislature either way.

Nearer term, watch the Department of Insurance. Kentucky has issued no insurance advisory opinion since 2024 and no 806 KAR regulation implementing HB 568 is pending, so the mandatory contract contents and the affiliation bar will be applied first through enforcement rather than through rulemaking.