Homes by Avi is now installing hail-resistant roofing on every new single-family home it builds in Alberta, starting August 1.
Insurance Bureau of Canada said the Calgary-based builder is the first large-volume homebuilder in the province to make the upgrade standard, and is calling on other builders in hail-prone regions to follow.
The company is installing UL Class 4 impact-resistant shingles, supplied by BP Canada, on all its detached homes going forward. IBC said hail-resistant roofing and siding can cut home insurance premiums by up to 50% in high-risk areas like Calgary, since the materials reduce both damage severity and claims frequency.
"Homes by Avi is demonstrating the kind of leadership we need to better protect homeowners and families from the new weather reality Albertans are facing," said Aaron Sutherland, vice-president, Pacific and Western, at IBC.
Alberta has logged eight catastrophic weather events so far this year, with hundreds of millions of dollars in insured damage, and IBC continues to call it Canada's disaster capital.
The province has seen a major hailstorm every year for the past decade. Separate reporting citing IBC figures puts total insured hail losses at more than $11 billion over the past two decades, including roughly $6 billion in the last five years alone.
The August 2024 Calgary hailstorm caused more than $2.8 billion in insurable damage, making it the second costliest disaster in Canadian history.
One builder standardizing impact-resistant shingles is a meaningful step, but it's a narrow one. Homes by Avi builds only a fraction of Alberta's new housing stock, and the move does nothing for the hundreds of thousands of existing homes already standing in hail alley with conventional asphalt roofs.
Not everyone agrees the link between resilient construction and cheaper insurance is as direct as it sounds.
Ward 5 Calgary councillor Raj Dhaliwal, who has pushed to revive the city's roofing rebate program, called the move a good start but said the bigger question remains unresolved.
"If someone is buying a hail-resilient house, how does that translate into reduced insurance premiums and deductibles?" he said. He added that municipalities, builders, insurers and higher levels of government still aren't having that conversation, and noted that even some newer Calgary communities have suffered significant hail damage despite better construction.
For brokers, the practical point is that a Class 4 roof may qualify a client for a discount with some insurers, but the size of that discount isn't standardized across the market.
IBC is also calling for Calgary to revive its Resilient Roofing Rebate Program, which isn't a new idea, it's asking for something the city already tried and shut down. The program launched in 2021 with $2.175 million in funding, offered $3,000 rebates for Class 4 roof upgrades, and awarded roughly 1,600 rebates before city council voted to end it in 2022 once the money ran out. Dhaliwal and others objected at the time, wanting it extended for a backlog of waitlisted applicants.
A 2024 push to bring the program back cited a benefit-cost ratio of 3 to 1, meaning the shingles pay for themselves in avoided damage within about five years, but that effort hasn't led to a revived program yet.
IBC is also asking government for funding to match incentives some insurers already offer for retrofits, and for better hail notification systems so residents can move vehicles before a storm hits.
"With insurers stepping up to make it more attractive for homeowners to invest in hail-resistant retrofits, IBC is strongly encouraging the government to come to the table with additional financial supports for homeowners to make these improvements," Sutherland said.
Whether that call gets a different response than Calgary's 2022 and 2024 rebate debates did will depend less on this single builder's announcement than on how the province and city weigh a repeatable cost against the price of doing nothing.
