A Decatur electrical contractor calls on a Thursday wanting his general liability shopped before a September renewal. Good account, four vans, no claims he can remember. By Friday afternoon three markets have come back with the same answer: send loss runs and we will quote. He does not know what a loss run is, his current agent is in no hurry to produce one, and the renewal is eleven days out.
That sequence plays out constantly, and it is the single most common reason a commercial shopping exercise runs out of time. Loss runs are not optional paperwork. They are the document that decides whether an underwriter will price your account at all.
What a loss run actually is
A loss run is a report generated by your insurance carrier listing every claim filed against a policy over a stated period. For each claim it typically shows the date of loss, a short description, the amount paid, the amount still reserved for future payment, and whether the claim is open or closed.
Underwriters read it as a track record. A clean five-year loss run says you are a better risk than the class average. A run with three open claims and heavy reserves says the opposite. Either way, it is evidence — and evidence beats what you remember about your own history, which is the point.
Why no claims is not the same as no loss runs
Owners with genuinely clean histories often assume the absence of claims means there is nothing to send. Underwriters do not read it that way. To them, a missing loss run is an unknown, and unknowns get priced as though they were bad.
Some carriers will quote without them, but they will load the rate to cover the uncertainty, or they will issue subject to loss runs being received before binding — which just moves the deadline. Producing a clean loss run is one of the few things a business owner can do that reliably lowers a quote.
How many years, and from whom
Three to five years is the standard ask. Five is better on commercial auto and trucking. Three is usually enough on a small general liability or business owners policy.
Every carrier in that window, not just the current one. If you switched carriers eighteen months ago, the underwriter wants both. Gaps in the history raise the same questions a missing document does.
They come from the carrier, not the agent. Your agent can request them on your behalf, but the document is generated by the insurance company. That distinction matters when an outgoing agent is slow to help.
How to get them when your current agent is not helping
This is the part nobody tells business owners:
you do not need your current agent's cooperation. You are the named insured. The loss run is a record of your own account and you are entitled to it.
Call the carrier directly. The number is on your declarations page or your insurance card. Ask for the underwriting or customer service line, give them your policy number, and request loss runs for the last five years. Most carriers will email them within one to three business days, and several will produce them the same day.
If you would rather put it in writing, a short email works: your business name, the policy number, the period requested, and where to send the report. No explanation is required, and you are not obligated to say why you want them.
The mistakes that cost people their renewal window
Waiting until the last week. A carrier taking three business days is normal. Three business days inside an eleven-day window, on an account that then needs to go to four markets, is not enough runway.
Sending a certificate instead. A certificate of insurance proves coverage exists. It says nothing about claims. Underwriters need both and they are not interchangeable.
Sending one carrier's report when there were two. The gap is more suspicious than the claims would have been.
Assuming a verbal no-claims history will do. It will not, on any account of size.
What to do with a loss run that is not clean
A claim on the record is not the end of a submission. What underwriters want to understand is what happened, whether it is likely to happen again, and what changed afterward. A rear-end collision followed by a new dashcam policy and a driver training program reads very differently from the same collision with no explanation attached.
Send the loss run with a short written narrative for anything significant. It is the cheapest underwriting improvement available, and a good agent will help you write it. The same logic applies to inspection and safety data on a trucking file, which we cover in our piece on
what a new operating authority runs into when it looks for coverage.
What a loss run will not tell you
One limitation worth understanding. A loss run reports claims filed against your policy. It does not report incidents you handled out of pocket, near misses, or losses a customer absorbed. Two businesses with identical loss runs can be running very different operations.
Underwriters know this, which is why a clean run gets you a good price and a site visit or a safety questionnaire gets you a better one. If your operation has genuinely improved since an older claim, say so in writing rather than hoping the report speaks for itself.
The short version
Request your loss runs before you start shopping, not after a market asks. Ask for five years, from every carrier in that window, directly from the carrier if you need to. Send them with an explanation for anything that needs one.
If you want help getting them, that is a normal part of what an agent does — we request loss runs for clients regularly and we are glad to do it for you before your renewal gets tight. You can see how the rest of a commercial file comes together in our overview of
general liability costs for a Texas small business, or simply
get in touch and we will start the request today.
Call (800) 666-2254 — or text
QUOTE to (817) 646-6700 · tapinsuretx.com
Educational only; coverages and availability vary by carrier. TAP Insurance Agency, PLLC — Rhome, TX, licensed in Texas and Oklahoma.
