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The reimagined Town Hall at the Restoration Industry Association’s 80th International Restoration Convention & Industry Expo last week opened with a simple but telling instruction: walk up to the mic and ask anything. There were no pre-screened questions, no table cards, and no filters, but just restorers, a panel of RIA leaders, and the issues keeping people up at night.

What followed was one of the most candid exchanges in recent RIA convention history—touching on artificial intelligence, carrier relationships, ethics, margin compression, independent contractor advocacy, and the future of the trade itself.

AI: The industry’s double-edged sword

No topic generated more heat than AI, and it surfaced early and often.

One attendee cut directly to it: Carriers are using AI aggressively against restorers, scrutinizing invoices, flagging line items, and applying algorithmic pressure to margins. What, he asked, is the RIA doing about it?

The expert panel acknowledged the urgency. The RIA’s Emerging Technology Task Force is actively examining how new tools are reshaping the claims environment, and the Independent Pricing Task Force—with volunteer members present in the room—is working to bring transparency and contractor-side education to how AI systems evaluate restoration invoices. If you’re passionate about that issue, raise your hand, and get plugged in, one panelist said.

But the panel also offered a more expansive view: AI isn’t only a threat. Looking three to five years out, panelists described a near-future in which estimating as restorers know it today is fundamentally transformed. Scanning technology may soon allow a technician on-site to generate a scope within minutes. The estimator’s role, they suggested, will shift toward sales and customer communication, spending less time sketching measurements and more time explaining the process to homeowners. The role will be redefined, and we need to have a voice in how these tools are built, because they’re only as good as the input, one panelist said.

That theme—having a seat at the table before decisions are made—echoed throughout the morning.

Advocacy: From conversation to action

One of the most prominent themes was the RIA’s transformation into a genuine advocacy force. A question about the association’s annual report prompted a summary of what panelists described as one of the most consequential years in the organization’s legislative history.

In 2025, the RIA launched its VoterVoice platform, enabling restorers to take direct action on state-level bills affecting their businesses. The association also secured a seat at the table with insurance regulatory bodies, allowing the industry—for the first time in a meaningful way—to help shape legislation rather than simply react to it.

Panelist Vince Scarfo, who now serves as the RIA’s full-time director of advocacy and government affairs, was cited as a centerpiece of that effort, with his work monitoring legislation across all 50 states and building relationships with lawmakers.

“This is an army effort,” Scarfo emphasized. “Sign up on the website, add your employees, grow the numbers, so when we’re in a room with a legislator, we’re representing a constituency they can’t ignore.”

The Louisiana example resonated in the room: 13 restoration companies had already activated through the advocacy platform in that state alone. The message was clear—more voices mean more leverage.

TPAs, margin pressure, and where the industry is headed

When an attendee asked where TPA and program work is headed over the next five years, the panel didn’t sugarcoat it.

One panelist who had previously expected TPAs to fade said his view has changed completely. Consumers call their insurance company when disaster strikes—that’s the natural behavior, and carriers with TPA infrastructure have every incentive to expand it. More service level agreements, more program requirements, more pressure on margins: The panel saw this trajectory continuing.

But the conversation pivoted to strategy. The RIA’s code of ethics initiative, still in development, was framed not just as an internal accountability tool, but as a potential lever in TPA relationships. If the association can certify ethical restorers and TPAs can rely on that certification as a performance signal, the RIA gains standing to negotiate, not just participate. The industry could lead from that ethical perspective, one panelist said, and help make sure the terms contractors are agreeing to actually have our voice in them.

On the broader margin question, one panelist with three decades in the business offered some historical grounding: Margin pressure isn’t new. It was a concern when he entered the industry thirty years ago. What’s different now is speed—AI has compressed the timeline of change dramatically. The 10-and-10 structure, once considered a floor, is now openly under attack by some carriers. The response, multiple panelists agreed, is not litigation but advocacy, relationships, and collective strength.

Ethics: Building it into the DNA

The convention’s emphasis on a new code of ethics drew focused questions from the floor. Attendees wanted to know: Will this be a document people sign and forget, or will it carry real teeth?

The panel’s answer was deliberate. The code of ethics is designed as an annual renewal process, not a one-time certification. Training will be required, and the intent is to extend accountability down into organizations, to the water technicians and fire techs who are actually in homeowners’ homes. Front-line workers, panelists argued, are the ones who most need to embody ethical standards, and the ones carriers and clients actually interact with.

Enforcement mechanisms are still being developed, and the committee actively sought volunteers from the floor to help shape that framework.

The connection between the code of ethics and the industry’s larger challenges was also made explicit: a credibly certified ethical contractor base gives the RIA standing it currently lacks in conversations with carriers, TPAs, and regulators.

Independent restorers: Finding their voice

The Voice of the Independent Task Force drew genuine interest from the floor, with attendees asking about the member survey and the problems it surfaced.

The core intent, panelists explained, is straightforward: Smaller restorers have historically been absent from the big-picture industry conversations. The task force exists to fix that. Applications are open annually to ensure rotating representation, and anyone interested was invited to find RIA staff on the floor to get involved.

On the question of how larger platform companies and enterprise members relate to independents, one panelist with a foot in both worlds put it plainly: We’re all in this together. Enterprise memberships, he noted, direct half of their contributions directly to advocacy, benefiting every restorer, regardless of size.

Avoiding the road to Chapter 7

With hundreds of years of collective business experience on the panel, the Town Hall’s most practical segment may have been when attendees asked what separates restorers who survive from those who don’t.

The answers were direct. Equipment is one of the most common traps: A good year leads to capital investment in gear that sits idle, after-tax money tied up in depreciating assets rather than generating returns. Rental, panelists noted, often pencils better than ownership when fixed-cost assumptions are stress-tested.

Broader fixed-cost creep—bigger warehouses, aggressive compensation commitments made during strong markets—was cited as the other major vulnerability. Property claims in Florida were down 55% in 2025, a panelist said. South Carolina was down 61%. When the market contracts, businesses built on optimistic revenue assumptions don’t survive the correction.

The other recurring theme: people. Restorers who try to run everything themselves, who don’t build teams and extend trust, are carrying risk that compounds over time. The panelists who had weathered the most difficult years pointed to their teams—not their equipment or their programs—as what got them through.

The membership question: Growing the table

With roughly 1,450 attendees in Savannah, the room was the largest in recent convention history, but panelists were quick to note it still represents a fraction of the industry.

The advice for growing the membership base was refreshingly unglamorous: make a phone call. Invite a competitor to the next regional event. Show a non-member how to provide feedback to Xactimate so the data in their market improves. Offer help before asking for a commitment.

One panelist described how a peer company had invited non-members — including direct competitors, to a regional AGA event, and many of those restorers are now engaged with the association for the first time. The mechanism was simple: exposure. Once people understand what the RIA is doing on their behalf, the value is hard to argue with.

The RIA’s vision, leadership shared, is 2,000 attendees at the next convention. Getting there means every member in the room becoming an evangelist, not through pressure, but through demonstration.

Closing thought

The Town Hall format—open floor, live mic, no pre-screened questions—reflected something the RIA has been working toward for several years: an association that feels less like a conference and more like a community. The questions were sharp. The answers were honest, including about what the industry doesn’t yet know and what work remains unfinished.

What stood out most was not any single answer, but the consistency of a theme: The restoration industry’s future depends on whether restorers show up, to task forces, to advocacy efforts, to their state legislatures, to each other. The tools are there. The infrastructure is being built. The question is participation.

The RIA 2026 International Restoration Convention & Industry Expo was held April 27–29 in Savannah, Georgia. The next convention is scheduled for Phoenix, Arizona, April 4–6, 2027.