No terms without the claims experience
You want to take a commercial account to market. The first thing each underwriter asks for is the claims experience for the last five years. The incumbent insurer holds the most recent years, a previous insurer holds the rest, and some claims were small ones the client handled themselves. Someone emails each insurer's claims or broker support team. The replies arrive over two or three weeks, in different formats: a PDF letter, a spreadsheet, a portal printout.
Then someone combines them into one table, reconciling claim dates, amounts paid and outstanding reserves, and noticing the claim that appears in one insurer's report but not the broker's own records. Only then can the submission go out.
Why it is always last-minute
The request is usually made when the handler starts remarketing, which is exactly when it is needed. Insurers take their own time. And the broker's own claims records, which could fill much of the gap, are held as notes and emails rather than as a history that can be printed.
- Requests go out when remarketing starts, not before.
- Each insurer returns the experience in its own format.
- Older years sit with insurers the client left long ago.
- The broker's own claims records are not structured.
- Combining reports is manual and error-prone.
What the wait costs
Every week spent waiting is a week less in front of underwriters. Some markets will not look at a risk without the full history, so the choice narrows. Handlers compile tables late in the process, and mistakes in them lead to queries or, worse, a presentation of the risk that does not match the insurer's records.
Requests on a timer, and one history per account
- For accounts you are likely to remarket, a claims experience request goes to the incumbent insurer automatically at a lead time you set, using the insurer's preferred route and your wording.
- Where the client has changed insurer in the period, requests go to previous insurers too, with the client's authority where needed.
- Requests are tracked and chased, and the handler sees which are outstanding.
- Each insurer's report is read, whatever its format, and each claim is extracted: date of loss, cause, paid, outstanding and status.
- The broker's own claims records are brought in from your claims tracker or broking system.
- A combined five-year history is built for the account, with duplicates matched and differences between sources flagged for the handler.
- The approved history can be dropped into the market submission in your format.
The history, reconciled
| Source | Format today | In the combined history |
|---|---|---|
| Incumbent insurer | PDF letter or portal print | Extracted, dated, matched |
| Previous insurer | Spreadsheet or email | Extracted, dated, matched |
| Your own claims records | Notes and emails | Structured from your tracker |
| Differences | Found by chance | Flagged for the handler |
The handler still decides how a claims record is presented to the market, including any explanation for a bad year. The build just makes sure the facts are ready when remarketing starts.
Remarketing with the facts already in hand
The handler opens the account at the start of remarketing and finds a reconciled history waiting, or a clear list of which insurer has not yet replied and when they were last chased. Underwriters get a claims table in the same layout every time, which makes the submission easier to read. When an underwriter asks about a particular loss, the handler can see where each figure came from.
There is a longer-term benefit too. Because your own claims tracker feeds the history, each year's claims experience builds on the last, and the account's record stops depending on what an insurer the client left four years ago is willing to send.
Is this slowing your renewals?
- Remarketing waits for claims experience to arrive.
- Each insurer's report comes in a different format.
- Claims histories are typed up by hand.
- Your own claims records do not match the insurer's.