How placing an account with us works

You can start with a single document. Everything after that is our work, with a short list of questions for you along the way.

The list below is the core of every submission we prepare. Each state guide adds the items its regulator, its perils and its lenders make necessary, and the state-by-state directory of property guides is the place to find yours.

• Declarations page and endorsements. The wording that decides a claim often lives in an endorsement: a cosmetic damage exclusion, a named storm deductible, a roof settlement schedule.
• Schedule of values. Replacement cost for every building, listed separately, with square footage and construction type. In states with a valued policy statute, the stated value can decide what a total loss pays, so it needs to be right before binding rather than after a fire.
• Roof details. Covering, age and replacement date for each building, with invoices where the roof is new. In hail country this single field can decide whether a building is quotable before price is discussed.
• Five years of loss runs. With the status of any open claims, and a sentence of context on anything large.
• Location detail. Flood zone, distance to the coast, wildfire mitigation, and any state certificate a coastal building needs.
• Loan documents. The insurance section of the loan agreement for financed property, so every option we bring back is one the lender will accept.

Missing pieces do not stop the work. We would rather begin with one document and build the rest together than wait for a complete binder.

Premium is the easiest number to compare and often the least informative. Two quotes a few thousand dollars apart can differ by far more than that after a single storm, depending on how the deductible is calculated, how the roof is settled and what the exclusions remove.

So each option is set out on the same terms:

• the wind and hail or named storm deductible, shown as a dollar figure for your buildings rather than only a percentage;
• whether roofs are settled at replacement cost or on a depreciated schedule;
• exclusions and limits that apply to your class, such as cosmetic damage, flood, earthquake and ordinance or law;
• whether the carrier is admitted and backed by the state guaranty fund, or a surplus lines carrier, which in most states the fund does not cover;
• whether the terms satisfy the loan documents.

Where a line such as business income cover for the months a building is closed or breakdown cover for boilers, chillers and tunnel equipment is missing or thin, the comparison says so, whether or not anyone asked. If your current program is priced fairly for the market, we will tell you that too.

A carrier's offer to bind often comes with conditions attached. The usual ones are an inspection of the property after binding, a signed application, and recommendations from that inspection that have to be completed by a stated date. None of these is unusual, but each one is a promise the owner makes, and a recommendation left undone can come back as a coverage problem or as tighter terms at the next renewal.

So before you sign, we list every condition attached to the option you have chosen, with the date each one falls due, and confirm that the lender will accept the terms as bound. After binding, we check the policy that arrives against the quote you accepted.

We would rather see a file three months before renewal than three days before it. Underwriters give their best attention to submissions that arrive with time to ask questions, and a hard-to-place building needs that time to reach every carrier that might write it. Coastal renewals in particular are started early, so the submission reaches every carrier with regional capacity to spare.

A renewal inside 60 days can still be worked; it simply narrows the number of markets that can respond properly. If your date is close, call or write to a licensed broker and say so at the start.

Binding is where the next renewal starts. We keep the schedule, the valuation and the reasoning behind each coverage decision on file, so the following year begins from what was agreed rather than from a blank page.

Some questions come back during the term. Occupancy changes, vacancies before winter, a building bought or sold, a roof replaced: each can change what the policy should say, and each is cheaper to deal with when it happens than after a loss. The commercial property coverage guide explains the policy terms these changes touch.

For the reasons owners bring these accounts to a specialist rather than a generalist, see what a specialist property broker does differently. When you are ready to begin, send us the declarations page.