Four things turn a guess into a real comparison. Without them, an insurer prices your risk assuming the worst, and the quote you get back is not comparable to the one you already have.
The four things that matter.
Ask three brokers for a quote and hand them nothing but your address and your industry, and you will get three numbers that cannot be compared with each other or with your current policy. An insurance quote is only as specific as the information behind it. These four things are what make the difference, and the second one is the one most business owners have never heard of.
1. The whole policy, not the declarations page
The declarations page is the summary at the front: your name, your limits, your deductibles, your premium. It is what most people send, and it is not enough. Two policies can carry identical declarations pages and cover quite different things, because the differences live in the endorsements and exclusions in the body of the document.
Send the full policy, including the wording and every endorsement. If you only have a certificate of insurance, that is not a policy either. A certificate is proof that coverage exists; it says almost nothing about what the coverage does.
2. Your claims history
A loss run is the claims history report your insurer produces for your account. It lists every claim reported during the period, the date, the type, what was paid, what is still reserved, and whether the file is open or closed. Brokers ask for three to five years, because that is the window underwriters price on.
You are entitled to it, and requesting it is routine. Ask your current broker, or ask your insurer directly if you would rather not signal that you are shopping. It is usually produced within a few business days.
This is the single item that most changes the quality of a quote. An underwriter with no claims history has to assume a worst case, and prices accordingly. An underwriter looking at four clean years prices what is in front of them. Two quotes, one with loss runs and one without, are not the same kind of document even if they carry the same limits.
- A claim that was reported and closed at zero still appears, and still gets read. It is not a mark against you, but it is better explained than discovered.
- Open reserves matter as much as paid amounts, because a reserve is the insurer's estimate of what a claim will eventually cost.
- If you have moved insurers in the last five years, you need loss runs from each of them, not just the current one.
3. Current values
Premium is calculated on measurable things, and if those numbers are stale, so is the quote. What is needed depends on what you insure, but the usual set is the building limit, contents and equipment values, annual revenue, annual payroll, and a vehicle list if you carry commercial auto.
Send what your business looks like now rather than what was reported at the last renewal. Values that drifted are one of the most common reasons a renewal rises without anything visible happening, and they are also the most common reason a claim settles lower than expected.
4. Any contract that dictates your insurance
If a general contractor, a landlord, a lender, a franchisor or a client contract tells you what to carry, send that wording too. These clauses set limits, require additional insured status, demand specific coverages such as completed operations or non-owned auto, and sometimes require notice of cancellation.
A quote that does not satisfy your contracts is not cheaper, it is unusable. Getting this in front of the broker at the start avoids finding out at the certificate stage that the policy cannot do what the job site requires.
Have the documents ready?
Upload the current policy and whatever else you have to hand. A broker reads it personally and tells you what it does and does not do, before any conversation about moving anything.