Commercial Insurance Brokers: directory of firms

Businesses with employees are required to carry workers compensation, unemployment and disability insurance. Workers compensation is administered state by state. The federal Office of Workers' Compensation Programs runs four programs covering federal employees, longshore and harbor workers, black lung and energy employees, but anyone injured while working for a private company or a state or local agency goes to their state workers compensation board.

That state-by-state structure has consequences for how the policy is written. Where you have employees, how each one is classified, and which states appear on the policy all matter, and adding a worker in a new state without telling your broker is a genuine exposure. Contracts add their own requirements on top: leases, client agreements and construction contracts routinely specify minimum limits and additional insured status.

A business owner's policy bundles general liability and commercial property into one contract at a lower cost than buying them separately, and suits smaller, lower-hazard operations. Once revenue, payroll or exposure grows past the eligibility rules, the program splits into separate policies, which costs more but allows each limit and each form to be negotiated on its own.

The other structural choice is the trigger. An occurrence policy responds to injury or damage that happens during the policy period, whenever the claim is made, which is why a general liability policy you cancelled years ago can still answer an old claim. A claims-made policy, common in professional liability, responds only to claims first made while it is in force, which makes the retroactive date and the availability of extended reporting coverage critical when you change carriers or close the business.

A broker builds a submission: descriptions of operations, revenue, payroll by class, property values, vehicle schedules, contracts you are required to insure, and loss runs showing your claims history from each current carrier. Loss runs take time to obtain and are the single most common reason a renewal goes to the wire. Request them early.

Work backwards from the expiry date. Sixty to ninety days out, the exposure information should be updated and the submission ready. Thirty days out, quotes should be in hand and differences in the forms explained, not just the premiums compared. Binding on the last afternoon removes any ability to negotiate and usually means accepting whatever the incumbent offers.

Some risks the standard market simply will not write: a new contractor in a difficult trade, a business with a serious loss history, an unusual product, an exposure nobody has priced before. Those go to surplus lines carriers, which are non-admitted specialist insurers that focus on developing new coverages and structuring policies and premiums for unique risks that lack the loss history needed for standard actuarial pricing.

The consequence is the one your broker should say out loud: guaranty fund protection is a feature of the admitted market and is not available in the surplus lines market, although the NAIC notes that surplus lines insolvency has historically been rare. Ask whether each policy in your program is admitted or non-admitted, and ask what it would take to move back into the standard market at a future renewal.