Loss runs: how to request the report your renewal depends on

Loss runs are the claims history reports produced by an insurance carrier for a policyholder, listing claims made during the policy periods with their dates, descriptions, amounts paid and amounts reserved. Underwriters at competing carriers use them to price a renewal, and without them a broker cannot get a meaningful quote.

They are also the document businesses request too late. Carriers commonly take days to weeks to produce them, several policy years are usually needed, and each carrier has to be asked separately. A renewal begun a fortnight before expiry produces a market approached with incomplete information, which produces fewer quotes and worse pricing.

What loss runs to request, and from whom

• Loss runs for each line — workers compensation, general liability, auto, property — since they are produced separately.
• The number of years your broker needs, commonly three to five, which may mean approaching a previous carrier as well as the current one.
• Valued as at a recent date, and stated on the report. An old valuation shows reserves that have since moved.
• Including open claims with current reserves, not only closed ones — reserves are what drive pricing.
• From the carrier, or through your broker where the carrier will only deal with the agent of record.

Read them before your underwriter does

Loss runs frequently contain errors that work against the policyholder: a claim recorded against the wrong entity, a subrogated recovery not reflected, an open reserve on a matter that closed months ago, or a duplicate. Each one inflates the loss picture an underwriter prices from. Reviewing them and asking the carrier to correct or re-value what is wrong is a legitimate and routine request, and it is worth doing before the reports go to market rather than after the quotes come back.

Start the request ninety days before expiry. That is the single highest-return habit in commercial insurance renewal, and it costs nothing — it simply moves the same work earlier, into a period where a slow carrier response does not compress the entire marketing exercise.

Open reserves are an argument you can have

A large open reserve on a claim you believe will settle for much less distorts pricing for years, because the reserve rather than the eventual payment is what the underwriter sees. Where you have grounds — a liability position, a resolved dispute, a claimant who has returned to work — raise it with the carrier and ask for the reserve to be reviewed. Carriers do adjust reserves; they simply do not do it unprompted, and the policyholder is the only party with an incentive to prompt.

Keeping the renewal file

Ettex Records holds the loss runs by carrier, line and valuation date alongside the corrections you requested, Ettex Sheets tracks the renewal calendar so the request goes out on time every year, and the application they support is covered in acord 125. The rating factor they feed is covered in experience modification rate.

Plainly: this is records and scheduling, not insurance advice, and your broker is the party who should be running this process. What businesses control is starting it early and reading the reports rather than forwarding them unopened.