Most bad renewals are late renewals. Here is the timeline that keeps the decision yours rather than whatever arrives in the last week.
A working timeline.
A renewal is not an event that happens to you in the last two weeks. It is a process with a lead time, and insurers price rushed submissions conservatively because a rushed submission is an incomplete one. The businesses that get good renewals are the ones that start while there is still time to do something about the answer.
90 days out: decide whether to test the market
This is the only decision that needs real lead time, because remarketing takes the whole runway. Test the market if the policy has not been marketed in three or more years, if your business has changed a lot, if last year's increase was rate driven, or if the service has been a problem.
Stay put if you have a fresh claim, if you moved insurers recently, or if the account was properly marketed last year and nothing has changed. Moving for the sake of it has costs that do not show on a quote.
60 days out: assemble the file
Whether you are remarketing or not, this is the work. A broker cannot present what they do not have, and an incumbent underwriter reads an updated file more favourably than a silent one.
- Request loss runs for the last five years, from every insurer used in that window.
- Update your values: building, contents, equipment, revenue, payroll, and the vehicle list.
- Collect any new contracts that dictate limits, additional insured status, or specific coverages.
- List what changed in the business this year: new locations, new services, new equipment, more staff, work you stopped doing.
- Note anything you fixed that an insurer previously asked about, with the invoice or inspection to prove it.
30 days out: expect terms, and read them properly
Renewal terms should be in front of you with a month to go. If they are not, chase them, because the alternative is a decision made under time pressure.
When they arrive, compare against the expiring policy rather than against your memory of it. Deductibles, sublimits and exclusions move at renewal, and a modest premium increase sometimes conceals a narrower policy. Ask what changed in the wording, not just what changed in the price.
7 days out: confirm, do not assume
Confirm in writing that coverage is bound for the new term. A verbal "it is all set" is not a binder, and the gap between the two is where uninsured days come from.
Check that any certificates your contracts require will reflect the new policy period, especially if a job site, landlord or lender needs one on file. Certificates referencing an expired policy are a routine and avoidable problem.
After it renews: the ten minutes most people skip
When the new policy document arrives, read the declarations page against what you were told you were buying. Confirm the limits, the deductibles, the named insureds, and the locations. Errors at this stage are easy to fix and expensive to discover at claim time.
Then put next year's date in your calendar, ninety days before expiry rather than on it. That single calendar entry is what turns this from an annual scramble into a process.
Renewal coming up in the next 90 days?
Send us the expiring policy and we will tell you what the file needs and whether it is worth taking to market. If your current program is right, that is a perfectly good answer and we will give it.