09/01/2026
To learn more about the State Farm documents, visit our blog, which contains all 31 documents and a description of them.
It started as a “biggest bucket of opportunity.” Internally, State Farm identified full roof replacements as the single largest area where it could cut costs. One executive, Nicole Manduca, wrote plainly that this “biggest bucket” meant savings on what the company pays out to policyholders. (Ex. 3-4). A 2020 planning document put a number on it: roof claims made up 57% of what State Farm was paying out — making it the company’s top target. (Ex. 5).
They built a playbook and rolled it out nationwide. Starting with a “kickoff” in Dallas County, Texas in June 2020, the tactics expanded to all of Texas by December, then to every state by the end of that year. (Ex. 30). The documents lay out the specific tools used to get adjusters to approve fewer full roof replacements and more “repairs” instead:
A “Roof Skills Review” and mandatory refresher training
A training module called “Art of the Conversation” — essentially, a script to help adjusters and agents deliver bad news to customers without changing the actual insurance policy
“Haag Refresher”
Extra manager sign-off required before a roof replacement could be approved — but not before a claim was denied or downgraded to a repair
Weekly tracking of how often roof-replacement decisions were being “overturned” to repairs instead
A dedicated internal team — the “Hail Reconciliation Unit” — whose job was to review and reverse roof-replacement recommendations
(Ex. 30)
They measured it like a sales campaign. Executives discussed “how we’ll know the tactics are working” and tracked the ratio of full roof replacements to partial repairs. (Ex. 2). According to the documents, that ratio was cut by more than half after the rollout. (Ex. 6). One executive, Tom Moss, did the math out loud in an email: each percentage-point drop in approvals was worth roughly $78.8 million a year, based on an average savings of about $15,769 per denied or downgraded claim. (Ex. 7).
They bragged about the results. An internal email credits the roof tactics with a $1.4 billion drop in claims payouts in just the first year. (Ex. 6). One executive described a new internal tracking dashboard as a “silver platter” handed to the team running the program. (Ex. 8).
There was assistance from outside consulting to make the numbers look legitimate. State Farm hired Accenture to help develop industry benchmarks suggesting insurers overpay on wind and hail claims — benchmarks built to justify the internal cost-cutting rather than to reflect independent, objective standards. (Ex. 10, Ex. 30).
State Farm worked with Haag to use a hidden definition of damage, which is missing from State Farm’s policy. Haag wrote a white paper in 2006, which defined functional damage: State Farm’s operational guidelines, on Section C, Composition Roofs, State Farm trains its adjusters that “damage occurs to roof coverings when water shedding ability or the life expectancy of the material is reduced.” (Ex. 26). That is the same definition provided by Haag, but is completely missing from State Farm’s policies. Exhibit 27 shows that State Farm required all of its claim handlers and team managers must watch at least 2 hours each year and new claim handlers must have 5.5 hours of Haag training videos.
State Farm’s own agents were sounding the alarm the whole time. Hundreds of agents complained because they witnessed firsthand how wind and hail claim handling changed drastically but the policy did not change at all. A State Farm agent, Tracy Haus, emailed company leadership directly, including the CEO and CFO, warning that the company’s reputation was collapsing because of how roof claims were being handled. (Ex. 17). She wrote that customers were being lowballed, that adjusters were being pushed to write repair estimates instead of replacements even when replacement was clearly warranted, and that even competitors known for bad claims service — like Allstate — now had a better reputation than State Farm in some markets. Other internal documents describe agents as “distrustful” of the company and note a “larger than normal number of complaints.” (Ex.’s 18, 19, 20, 21). Leadership’s response, per the documents, was to keep running the same tactics causing agents, contractors and insureds complaints. (Ex.’s 6, 13, 14). State Farm engaged in training the agents to have harder conversations with the “Art of the Conversation,” which helped agents have “tougher conversations” when “we are unable to extend coverage or only partial coverage.” (Ex. 9). State Farm even had an Oklahoma call with all the captive agents to discuss wind and hail coverage in 2020. (Ex. 24).
There was even a repurposed “Fix Profit Task Force” discussing claims. Internal emails show a group originally focused on profit strategy was repurposed to meet weekly specifically to discuss claims-handling numbers — a detail that undercuts the industry’s usual defense that claims departments are walled off from profit pressure. (Ex. 14).
A 2020 “Prioritized Tactics” playbook lays out the rollout timeline: a kickoff in Dallas County, Texas in June 2020, expansion across Texas that December, and expansion to all states by December 17, 2020. The listed tactics include roof skills reviews, HAAG refresher training, team-manager review of roof-replacement recommendations (but not denials), and weekly monitoring of overturned recommendations. (Ex. 30.) A related “Hail Reconciliation Unit” is described as existing specifically to overturn full-replacement recommendations and track the resulting reductions in coverage. (Ex. 31.)
Court Unseals 31 State Farm Documents — Our Firm Moves to Make Them Public Record Comanche County Judge Sheperd ruled on August 20, 2026 that 31 internal documents are not "confidential" and are not required to be filed under seal. These documents show State Farm developed hidden tactics to reduce...
