Check your homeowner’s insurance…especially if you’ve been hit hard by wind and hail lately. You may have a gaping hole in your roof insurance coverage without even knowing it.

Many insurers are dialing back the roof coverage portion of their home insurance, and many of those changes to existing policies go unnoticed by consumers.

The trend is for insurers to offer “actual cash value,” or ACV, coverage on your roof instead of full “replacement cost value,” or RCV. What’s the difference? With ACV, your insurer pays to repair or replace your roof, less your deductible and depreciation for the age and type of roof. With RCV, however, the insurer pays all the costs to make your roof whole again without factoring in depreciation, once you’ve met your deductible. It makes a big difference.

Let’s say your $20,000 roof is 10 years old and your home insurance policy has a $1,000 deductible. If a storm destroys it and you have actual cash value roof coverage that depreciates the roof’s value by $1,000 per year, your out-of-pocket share of the cost for a new roof would be $11,000 (the $1,000 deductible plus $10,000 for the depreciation). With replacement cost coverage, you’d be out only the $1,000 deductible.

Why are some insurers doing this? Because in areas that have been hard hit by storms over the past few years, insurers have had to replace a roof multiple times on the same house and have decided that it just isn’t profitable for them. So keep your eyes open.