Short answer: Yes. How you pay your own deductible is your business, and a third-party loan is one way to do it. What Colorado law prohibits is different: under C.R.S. 6-22-105(1), a roofing contractor paid from insurance proceeds may not advertise or promise to pay, waive, or rebate any part of your deductible. Financing it yourself is you paying it.
Can you finance a roof insurance deductible in Colorado?
Yes. Your deductible is money you owe under your own policy, and where that money comes from — savings, a credit card, a home equity line, a personal loan from a third-party lender — is between you and whoever you borrow it from. Nothing in Colorado's roofing statute tells a homeowner how to fund their share.
The confusion is understandable, because there is a Colorado law about roofing and deductibles. It just isn't about you. It's about us.
Isn't that the same as a roofer covering my deductible?
No, and the difference is the whole point of this page.
Financing your deductible: you owe $2,500. You borrow $2,500 from a lender, you pay the $2,500, and you repay the lender on their terms. The deductible got paid in full, by you.
A contractor covering your deductible: you owe $2,500. The contractor tells you not to worry about it — they'll "eat it," "work with you on it," "build it into the estimate," or simply never invoice you for it. The deductible did not get paid. Somebody is absorbing it, and if the job is being paid from insurance proceeds, that somebody is billing your insurer for a number that doesn't reflect what you actually paid.
The first is a financing decision. The second is the thing Colorado has a statute about.
What does C.R.S. 6-22-105 actually say?
The operative sentence is short. A roofing contractor whose payment "will be made from the proceeds of a property and casualty insurance policy" shall not advertise or promise to pay, waive, or rebate all or part of any insurance deductible applicable to the claim.
Three things worth noticing in that wording.
It covers advertising, not just doing. The prohibition attaches to advertising or promising. A contractor doesn't have to actually absorb your deductible to be on the wrong side of it — offering to is enough. So "we'll cover your deductible" on a yard sign, a flyer, a door-knock script, or an ad is the violation, independent of what happens later.
The consequences run to the contractor, and they reach your claim. The same section provides that if a contractor violates it, your insurer is not obligated to consider that contractor's estimate, and that either you or the insurer may bring an action against the contractor for damages. Read that first consequence again from your side of the table: the estimate you were counting on can be set aside, and you are the one holding a damaged roof.
The same section also limits what a roofer can be. A roofing contractor soliciting work in Colorado may not claim to be or act as a public insurance adjuster. It also says nothing in that provision stops a contractor that has a valid contract with you from discussing the scope of repairs with your insurer on your behalf.
These are civil provisions, not criminal ones. That distinction, and where the line into actual fraud sits, is covered in more depth in our post on whether a Colorado roofer can pay your deductible.
So why do so many roofers offer it anyway?
Because it works on people, and because the homeowner rarely finds out it was a problem.
A deductible is the single biggest obstacle between a storm and a signed contract. A contractor who makes it disappear closes more jobs than one who doesn't. The cost of that promise shows up later and somewhere else — in an inflated scope sent to an insurer, in a cheaper install than the one that got quoted, in a "warranty" from a company that won't be reachable in three years, or in a claim the insurer reopens.
If somebody offers to handle your deductible, you've learned something useful about them in the first ten minutes, for free.
Does financing change the price of the roof?
It shouldn't, and with us it doesn't. Our written estimate is the same number whether you pay by check, from insurance proceeds, or with a loan, and a denied application doesn't change it either.
That's worth asking any contractor directly. If a quoted price goes up when you pay with a loan, the difference is a cost of the financing, and you should see it written down as one.
Who decides whether I'm approved?
Not your roofer.
We partner with Hearth, a third-party financing company, so homeowners can look at payment options in one place. Hearth and its lending partners set every rate, every term, and every approval decision. We are not the lender, we don't fund anything, we don't hold your note, and we get no say in approval — nobody here can push an application through or tell you what it will come back with.
We also don't publish rates, terms, or monthly payments of our own, here or anywhere else on our site. The figures in the calculator on our financing page are Hearth's, under the assumptions Hearth prints with them, because the party that sets the terms should be the party that states them.
Should I finance a roof at all?
Often, no — and we'd rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.
Most homeowners don't finance. If your claim covers the work and your deductible is money you already have, paying it is simpler and cheaper than borrowing it. Financing earns its keep in a narrower set of situations: the deductible is real money you don't have on hand and the roof is actively failing; the claim was denied and the roof still needs replacing; or you're choosing an upgrade the claim won't cover, like a Class 4 impact-resistant system, and you'd rather spread that difference than skip it.
What shouldn't drive the decision is urgency manufactured by a contractor. There is no Colorado statute setting a deadline for reporting hail damage to your own insurer — your policy sets that, and the numbers people quote at doorsteps are usually the wrong statute entirely. We wrote that one up separately: how long you actually have to file a hail claim.
A roof that needs replacing will still need replacing next week. Get the inspection, get the findings in writing, then decide how to pay for it.
Sources
- C.R.S. 6-22-105 — Waiver of insurance deductible prohibited. Colorado Revised Statutes 2024, Title 6 (PDF), article 22 (residential roofing services), the uncertified printout published by the Colorado Office of Legislative Legal Services.
- C.R.S. 6-22-103 — Contracts for roofing services, writing required, required terms. Same Title 6 printout (PDF).
We're roofers, not lawyers, and this isn't legal advice. The statute is linked above and it's short — read it. For how it applies to your specific contract or claim, talk to an attorney or your insurer.