Appendix B: Lines of Business Quick Reference

This is the field card. When you move from one line to another — and over a career you will, because the account that lands on your desk rarely respects the org chart — the questions are the same but the answers are not. What does this coverage actually pay for? What measures the exposure, so I know what to multiply the rate by? Which form am I reading, and where do its exclusions live? What kills these accounts — frequency or severity, this year or in three years? And what are the two or three things that, more than anything else, separate a good risk from a bad one in this line?

Use this appendix the way you would use a glossary: to orient fast, not to underwrite from. Every line here gets a full chapter (and several get more), and the judgment lives in the chapters, not in a table. A card can tell you that the experience modification factor (X-mod) is the defining lever in workers' compensation; it cannot teach you to read a loss run and see whether a debit mod is a bad workforce or one bad year. Treat the cards as the index to your own knowledge.

A note on the numbers. Every dollar figure, rate, percentage, and ratio in this appendix is a constructed teaching example — round numbers chosen to show a relationship, never a real insurer's rate, a filed loss cost, or a market statistic. Deductible bands, coverage limits, and rating relativities in the real world are filed, state-specific, and constantly moving; do not quote a number from this card to a broker. The forms, statutes, regulators, and institutions named (ISO, NCCI, the NFIP, the ACA, McCarran-Ferguson, the Miller Act, Lloyd's, the USDA Risk Management Agency) are real and named as such.


How to read each card

Each line gets the same six fields, in the same order:

  • Covers — the core promise: what kind of loss, from what kind of event, this coverage pays for.
  • Exposure / rating base — the variable that measures the size of the risk and to which the rate is applied to produce premium. (See exposure base, Ch.21, and exposure unit, Ch.6.)
  • Key form(s) — the policy template(s) you are most likely reading. "ISO/bureau" means a standardized, filed, court-tested form used across the market; manuscript means wording drafted for the specific risk. (See Ch.5.)
  • Primary hazards — what actually drives loss in this line, and whether the line's profitability is decided by frequency (how many) or severity (how big).
  • Key underwriting factors — the two-to-five characteristics that move the accept/decline/price decision the most.
  • Chapter — where the line is taught in full.

A summary table sits at the end (§B.16) for side-by-side scanning.


Part III — Personal Lines

B.1 Personal Auto — Chapter 14

Covers. A household's private-passenger autos under the personal-auto policy (PAP): liability (Part A) for bodily injury and property damage the insured causes; medical payments / personal injury protection; uninsured/underinsured-motorist coverage; and physical damage — collision and comprehensive — on the vehicles themselves.

Exposure / rating base. Per car-year, segmented hard. The premium is built from the driver class (the household's operators and their records), the vehicle symbol (the car's repair cost, theft attractiveness, and damageability), the rating territory (where the car is garaged and driven), use, and prior insurance.

Key form(s). The bureau PAP (most carriers build from the ISO version), modified by state-mandatory endorsements that vary widely.

Primary hazards. A frequency-led line: lots of small collisions and comprehensive claims, with a liability tail that adds severity. Distracted driving, traffic density, theft and weather (comprehensive), and the local injury-claim and litigation environment.

Key underwriting factors. Driving record (the MVR), the operators in the household, the vehicle, the territory, prior coverage and lapses, and — where permitted — the credit-based insurance score and telematics / usage-based insurance (UBI). This is the most-regulated personal line: which factors you may use is set state by state, and several states restrict or ban credit, and increasingly limit gender. It runs unprofitably across the industry in several recent years, which is exactly why rate adequacy and disciplined classification matter here more than the volume tempts you to believe.

⚠️ Underwriting Trap. Treating credit and telematics as free lunches. Both are powerful predictors and both sit on a live regulatory fault line (FCRA adverse-action duties on credit; consent and privacy questions on telematics). Know the rule in your state before you lean on either.

B.2 Homeowners — Chapter 15

Covers. A package of property and liability for an owner-occupied dwelling: the dwelling and other structures, personal property, loss of use, and personal liability. The market workhorse is the HO-3 (dwelling open-peril, contents named-peril); the HO-5 is the premium open-peril form for both; the HO-6 is the condominium unit-owner's form, read against the association's master policy.

Exposure / rating base. Per dwelling, rated on the Coverage A dwelling limit (the cost to rebuild, not market value), plus location, construction and protection, claims history, and — where permitted — credit.

Key form(s). ISO HO-3 / HO-5 / HO-6 (or carrier proprietary equivalents).

Primary hazards. Routine attritional losses (water, wind, fire, theft, liability) plus the line's defining problem: the catastrophe perils — hurricane, wildfire, earthquake, flood — which produce correlated losses that violate the independence the law of large numbers assumes. A homeowners book's profitability is decided in the rare catastrophe year, not the average one.

Key underwriting factors. Insurance to value (ITV) — chronic underinsurance is the line's quiet structural weakness; the roof's age and condition (replacement cost vs. ACV, often a roof schedule); catastrophe exposure and the named-storm/wind deductible (a percentage of the dwelling limit, the primary cat-retention lever); claims history; and protection class. Flood is generally excluded and placed through the NFIP or a private flood market — the protection gap at its starkest.

📋 At the Desk. The single most consequential homeowners number is not the premium — it is Coverage A. Set it to rebuild cost and the coinsurance/replacement-cost condition does its job; set it to a stale market value and you have written a coinsurance penalty into a partial loss the insured will never forgive.

B.3 Personal Umbrella & High-Net-Worth — Chapter 16

Covers. The personal umbrella sits above the auto and home policies, providing an additional layer of liability that responds only after the underlying limits are exhausted — and, for certain offenses the underlying policies exclude, dropping down to act as primary subject to a self-insured retention. HNW personal lines is the bespoke world above the mass market: high-value primary and secondary homes, valuable articles and collections, domestic-staff and high-limit liability, written on appraised, agreed-value, and extended-replacement-cost terms.

Exposure / rating base. The umbrella is rated on the underlying exposures (number of cars, homes, youthful drivers, watercraft, rental units) per million of limit. HNW is rated as an integrated account, not a class — the whole household's homes, valuables (scheduled personal property), and liability.

Key form(s). Carrier umbrella forms (less standardized than primary); HNW carriers use proprietary manuscript-style forms with broader valuation terms.

Primary hazards. Severity — a single liability judgment that pierces the underlying limit. For HNW, the same plus high-value concentrated property and catastrophe exposure on coastal and wildland-interface estates.

Key underwriting factors. The underlying-limit requirement (the umbrella attaches above stated minimums; the insured personally bears any gap from failing to maintain them); the count and nature of underlying exposures; for HNW, appraisals, the total insured value, catastrophe accumulation, and the value of writing the whole household (account rounding).


Part III — Personal Lines (Life & Health)

B.4 Life Insurance — Chapter 17

Covers. A promise to pay a death benefit on the insured's death — the purest form of risk classification, because the underwriter is estimating one thing: mortality, the probability this life dies within a given period, expressed as a mortality ratio against the standard life (standard = 100%).

Exposure / rating base. Per \$1,000 of face amount, priced through the assigned risk class — preferred plus, preferred, standard plus, standard, and substandard (graded table ratings, each table commonly ~+25% mortality), down to decline/postpone.

Key form(s). Term and permanent (whole, universal) life contracts; not a P&C bureau form world.

Primary hazards. Mortality drivers: age, tobacco, build (height-to-weight), blood pressure, cholesterol, and personal/family medical history. Anti-selection is acute — the people who most expect to need coverage are the most eager to buy it.

Key underwriting factors. The evidence: application, attending physician statement (APS), paramedical exam, labs, the MIB, and prescription history. The build chart read in the context of the labs and avocations (whole-person judgment, not box-checking). Accelerated underwriting uses third-party data and models to decide low-risk cases instantly, routing questionable files to full underwriting rather than declining them. Simplified issue and guaranteed issue trade evidence for access at a higher price, the latter defended by small face amounts and a graded death benefit.

⚖️ Compliance Corner. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) governs the use of genetic information in health coverage; its reach into life underwriting is narrower and contested, and state law varies. This is a live, sensitive line — state it qualitatively, and do not assume a single national rule. (The borderline applicant David Okafor is the book's worked example; see Ch.6, 10, 17, 35.)

B.5 Health Insurance — Chapter 18

Covers. Medical expense coverage. After the Affordable Care Act (ACA), most individual medical underwriting is gone — replaced by guaranteed issue and community rating — but underwriting did not disappear; it moved to large groups, self-funding, and stop-loss.

Exposure / rating base. Individual/small-group ACA premiums may vary only on a short enumerated list (age within a capped ratio, tobacco within a capped surcharge, geographic area, family tier, plan/metal tier) and may not vary on health status or claims history. Large groups are experience-rated on the group's own claims. Stop-loss is medically underwritten on the self-funded group's census and claims.

Key form(s). ACA-compliant individual and group medical plans; stop-loss contracts (specific and aggregate) sold to self-funded employers.

Primary hazards. The block's morbidity and the perennial enemy, adverse selection — managed structurally by risk adjustment, enrollment controls, and reinsurance where individual underwriting used to sit.

Key underwriting factors. For the lines where underwriting survives: group size and demographics, industry, the self-funded group's prior claims and large-claimant ("laser") profile, and the stop-loss attachment points (specific deductible per claimant; aggregate cap on the whole group).


Part IV — Commercial Lines

B.6 Commercial Property — Chapter 19

Covers. Buildings, business personal property (contents), and — the coverage that actually saves companies — business income / business interruption (BI) plus extra expense: the net income and continuing expenses lost while a covered peril suspends operations.

Exposure / rating base. Per \$100 (or \$1,000) of insured value, built up from the statement of values (SOV) location by location. Building valuation may be on replacement cost, agreed value, functional, or ACV terms; BI is measured by the period of indemnity and the business's net income plus continuing expenses.

Key form(s). ISO commercial property forms (building and personal property; business income), assembled in the commercial package policy (CPP); equipment breakdown and inland marine added as needed.

Primary hazards. Fire, water, wind/hail, and the catastrophe concentration that decides a property book. A severity-and-accumulation line: one large fire, or one storm across many insured locations, dominates the result.

Key underwriting factors. COPE — Construction, Occupancy, Protection, Exposure; highly protected risk (HPR) vs. non-HPR; valuation adequacy and the coinsurance/agreed-value test; the BI exposure and the realistic period of indemnity (governed by the longest-lead element of recovery, often equipment, not the building rebuild); and catastrophe accumulation by peril zone. Large risks are spread through layered/shared programs.

🗂️ The Underwriting File. Harbor Steel's property piece — \$20M building / \$8M equipment / \$10M BI on a 1994 metal-fabrication plant, non-HPR, named-storm exposed — is the spine of the progressive project. The roof, the two fire losses, and the BI period are worked across Chapters 9–12 and assembled at the capstone. (Constructed teaching account.)

B.7 BOP & Small Commercial — Chapter 20

Covers. The business owners policy (BOP) packages the core property, business-income, and general liability a small business needs into one simplified contract at one premium — the small-commercial analog of the homeowners policy.

Exposure / rating base. Class-rated: priced on the class (industry, occupancy, size band) rather than the individual risk, because a single small account's experience is rarely credible and the small premium will not justify a full investigation.

Key form(s). ISO BOP (and carrier proprietary BOPs); contrast with the tailored CPP used for larger or higher-hazard accounts.

Primary hazards. Ordinary attritional property and liability losses for low-hazard, standardized businesses; the segment's risk is mostly in mix and class drift, not in any one account.

Key underwriting factors. Eligibility (the class must qualify), the class itself, building/protection basics, and the straight-through-processing (STP) rules — because here the algorithm often binds. The craft is in the referral logic: knowing which submissions the rules should kick to a human and which they should not. The economics are low premium, high volume, thin margins, where speed and service decide who wins the account.

🤖 Model vs. Judgment. In small commercial the underwriting judgment moves upstream — from the individual file into the rule set and the class plan. STP does not remove judgment; it relocates it to the moment the rules were written. Write the rules badly and you will bind adverse selection at scale, fast.

B.8 Commercial General Liability (CGL) — Chapter 21

Covers. The workhorse liability line: an insured's legal liability to third parties for bodily injury, property damage, and personal & advertising injury arising out of its premises/operations, products-completed operations, and advertising — third-party coverage carrying a duty to defend.

Exposure / rating base. The exposure base varies by class — payroll, gross sales (revenue), or area — chosen to track the exposure and be auditable.

Key form(s). The ISO CGL coverage form, written on an occurrence trigger (the standard) or a claims-made trigger; modified heavily by additional-insured and contractual-liability endorsements.

Primary hazards. Premises slip-and-falls and ongoing-operations injuries (near-term, short-tail) and the long-tail, loss-sensitive products/completed-operations exposure, which can surface years after the work is done and carries its own separate aggregate.

Key underwriting factors. The class and its products hazard; the occurrence vs. claims-made trigger and, on claims-made, the retro date; additional-insured and contractual-liability demands from customers; the exposure base and its auditability; and the loss-sensitive tail. Excess and umbrella layers sit above the CGL.

B.9 Workers' Compensation — Chapter 22

Covers. A statutory, no-fault system: the employer pays defined medical, indemnity, disability, and death benefits set by state law, in exchange for the employee giving up the right to sue in tort (the "grand bargain"). Because the benefit is statutory, Part One carries no dollar limit; employer's liability (Part Two) is a separate coverage that does carry limits.

Exposure / rating base. Per \$100 of payroll, by NCCI class code (or an independent state bureau), anchored to the governing class, with clerical and drivers split out as standard exceptions. The estimated premium at binding is trued up by premium audit after the term.

Key form(s). The standard WC&EL policy; benefits defined by statute, not negotiated in the contract.

Primary hazards. Frequency of work injuries by occupation (lost-time vs. medical-only) and medical severity inflation; in monopolistic-fund states (e.g., Ohio, Washington) the statutory benefit comes only from the state fund.

Key underwriting factors. The class mix and governing class; the experience modification (X-mod) — a filed multiplier above or below 1.00 that turns the employer's own loss history into its price, weighting claim frequency over severity; payroll accuracy; the loss-control read; and the return-to-work program, the underwriter's most direct severity lever.

🗂️ The Underwriting File. Harbor Steel's WC — a welding-driven governing class, a debit X-mod from the prior claims, and a return-to-work credit — is built in Ch.22. (Constructed teaching account.)

B.10 Commercial Auto & Fleet — Chapter 23

Covers. Vehicles used in a business, on the business auto policy (BAP): liability and physical damage for owned autos, plus hired & non-owned auto (HNOA) — the often-missed exposure of rented vehicles and employees' personal cars used for the business — through a system of numbered coverage symbols.

Exposure / rating base. Per power unit, by vehicle type, radius of operations (local / intermediate / long-haul), use, and cargo; large fleets move to fleet rating that blends the fleet's own (partially credible) experience with the class.

Key form(s). ISO Business Auto Coverage Form, with the symbol table doing the heavy lifting of "which autos are covered for what."

Primary hazards. Severity, not frequency — the line is in crisis from nuclear verdicts and social-inflation-driven severity, much of it from the legal environment rather than the fleet's own behavior.

Key underwriting factors. Driver selection — the MVR and the driver qualification file (a valid license of the right class, a reviewed MVR, a medical certificate where required); fleet composition and radius; cargo and DOT compliance; HNOA exposure; and telematics, now central to both pricing and in-force risk management.

🗂️ The Underwriting File. Harbor Steel's 12-unit flatbed fleet surfaces one poor MVR; the nuclear-verdict severity exposure and a telematics requirement are worked in Ch.23. (Constructed account.)

B.11 Professional & Specialty Liability — E&O, D&O, EPL, Cyber — Chapter 24

Covers. The fastest-growing, most judgment-dependent corner of commercial lines, where exposures are intangible and data is thin: - Errors & omissions (E&O) / professional liability — financial harm from a negligent act, error, or omission in rendering professional services; insures a standard of care, not a result. - Directors & officers (D&O) — claims that directors and officers breached their duties; structured in Side A (individuals when the company can't indemnify), Side B (reimburses the company), Side C (the entity, primarily securities for public companies). - Employment practices liability (EPL) — employee claims of wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, retaliation. - Cyber liability — first-party loss (incident response, BI, data restoration, ransomware/extortion, notification) and third-party liability (privacy, regulatory defense, network-security liability).

Exposure / rating base. Revenue and professional fees (E&O); assets, market cap, and financials (D&O); headcount and turnover (EPL); revenue, records count, and industry (cyber).

Key form(s). Mostly claims-made manuscript/proprietary forms — retro dates and tail / extended reporting period (ERP) mechanics are central.

Primary hazards. Severity and volatility — low frequency, large and correlated losses, on exposures (especially cyber) that barely existed a decade ago and keep moving.

Key underwriting factors. The professional discipline and claims history (E&O); financial health and governance (D&O); HR practices and turnover (EPL); and for cyber, the security controls — MFA, backups, endpoint detection, patching — and whether a prior incident actually changed behavior. Claims-made retro dates and tail coverage must be managed on every account.

🗂️ The Underwriting File. Whether Harbor Steel needs cyber/E&O is decided here (a modest cyber add-on), and the post-breach submission Tindall Stores is introduced and worked — has the risk improved, or did the company just buy a policy to check a box? (Constructed accounts; see Ch.24, 31, 32.)

B.12 Surety Bonds — Chapter 25

Covers. Not insurance but credit: a three-party guarantee. A surety bond guarantees to an obligee that a principal will perform an obligation; if the principal fails, the surety performs or pays up to the penal sum and then seeks reimbursement from the principal. The underwriter expects near-zero losses. Contract surety = bid, performance, and payment bonds on construction/service contracts (much of it required by the Miller Act and state Little Miller Acts on public work). Commercial surety = license/permit, court, and fiduciary bonds.

Exposure / rating base. The bond penal sum and the contractor's program size — not a loss probability. Priced as a service/credit charge, not a pure-premium build-up.

Key form(s). Statutory and obligee-prescribed bond forms; an indemnity agreement from the principal.

Primary hazards. Principal default — contractor insolvency, project mismanagement, or fraud. Losses are infrequent but, when they come, severe; salvage and indemnity recovery follow.

Key underwriting factors. Underwrite it like a lender, on the three C's: character (integrity and track record), capacity (technical and managerial ability to perform at the contemplated size), and capital (working capital, net worth, liquidity, bank line, backlog) — traditionally weighted character first, capacity second, capital third.

⚠️ Underwriting Trap. Reading surety as just another liability line. It is a guarantee with a right of reimbursement; the question is not "how likely is a loss?" but "will this principal perform, and can it make me whole if it doesn't?" Price the program, not a probability of loss. (For Harbor Steel: bidding public work would require performance/payment bonds — credit, not a probability of loss. See Ch.25.)

B.13 Specialty & Niche Lines — Marine, Aviation, Energy, Crop, Parametric — Chapter 26

Covers. A world beyond the standard forms, each with its own logic. A specialty / niche line is one that — because of small or heterogeneous pools, correlated catastrophe, unusual exposures, or thin data — cannot be written with standardized forms and broad statistical credibility, and so demands deep domain expertise and often a distinct market (surplus lines, London/Lloyd's, pools, or delegated programs): - Ocean marine — hull, cargo, and marine liabilities (P&I, freight); the oldest line, shaped by general average and utmost good faith. Inland marine covers property in transit and mobile equipment. - Aviation — aircraft hull and aviation liability; the archetypal low-frequency, high-severity line, priced on engineering and severity, not broad credibility. - Energy — large, complex industrial risks (onshore/offshore), engineering-led, capacity-driven. - Crop / MPCI — Multiple Peril Crop Insurance, delivered through a federal public-private partnership in which the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA / FCIC) sets policies and rates and subsidizes premium while private insurers sell, service, and share the risk under the Standard Reinsurance Agreement. - Parametric — pays a pre-agreed amount on a measurable trigger (wind speed, quake magnitude, rainfall), regardless of actual loss; trades indemnity precision for speed and objectivity, at the cost of basis risk.

Exposure / rating base. Line-specific: insured value of hull/cargo (marine), hull value and use (aviation), total insured value of the facility (energy), insured acres and yield/revenue (crop), the limit and trigger definition (parametric).

Key form(s). London/marine clauses, aviation hull-and-liability forms, energy package wordings, the federal MPCI forms, and bespoke manuscript parametric contracts. Program business (the MGA model) packages a niche for a carrier under delegated authority.

Primary hazards. Predominantly severity and catastrophe — single large losses and correlated events on thin data; for parametric, basis risk (the trigger diverging from the real loss).

Key underwriting factors. Deep domain expertise; engineering and survey quality; values adequacy and accumulation; for crop, the federal framework and geographic spread; for parametric, the trigger design and the basis risk the insured is accepting; and, for delegated program business, the discipline of the MGA, because the carrier lends the pen but keeps the accountability.

🗂️ The Underwriting File. Harbor Steel's inland-marine piece — steel in transit and contractors' equipment — is added in Ch.26. (Constructed teaching account.)


Part V — Reinsurance

B.14 Reinsurance — Chapter 27

Covers. Insurance purchased by an insurer. Reinsurance is a contract under which a reinsurer indemnifies a ceding company (cedent) for all or part of the losses the cedent incurs on the policies it issued. The original policyholder's contract is unaffected, and — this is the part that bites — the cedent remains fully liable to its policyholder whether or not the reinsurer pays.

Exposure / rating base. Not a primary "exposure base" at all but a structure over the cedent's book. Proportional treaties share original premium and losses by percentage; non-proportional treaties charge a reinsurance premium for a layer of loss above a retention.

Key form(s) / structures. - Treaty vs. facultative — treaty covers a whole defined book automatically and obligatorily; facultative is arranged one risk at a time, optional for both sides. - Proportionalquota share (a fixed percentage of every risk, from the first dollar; best for surplus relief and growth) and surplus share (cedes only the part of each risk above the cedent's retention, in multiples called lines). Proportional business pays a ceding commission. - Non-proportionalexcess of loss (XOL), written in layers ("\$4M xs \$1M" covers \$1M–\$5M), capping the cedent's loss per event and protecting against severity; and catastrophe XOL, which responds to the aggregate loss from a single event across the whole book, sized against a modeled return period.

Primary hazards (to the cedent's program). Insufficient or wrongly-structured cover (a retention or limit that doesn't match the real PML); collectability — the reinsurer's financial strength, since the cedent still owes its policyholder; and, in opaque retrocession chains, a loss-amplifying spiral.

Key underwriting factors. How the structure shapes net vs. gross underwriting; the retention and limit against the book's modeled PML; the reinsurer's rating and collectability; and the cost of the cover, which flows straight back into every primary pricing decision.

🗂️ The Underwriting File. Harbor Steel's catastrophe exposure is ceded under the cat XOL treaty; the file asks whether the \$20M line needs facultative support and works the net-vs-gross view. (See Ch.27.)


B.15 Lines that aren't on a card (but you'll meet)

A few exposures in the book are coverages a working underwriter handles but that ride inside the cards above rather than standing alone:

  • Inland marine and equipment breakdown — usually parts of the commercial property / package deal (Ch.19), and listed under Commercial Property (§B.6) and Specialty (§B.13).
  • Excess and umbrella liability (commercial) — the layer above the CGL/auto/WC, underwritten on the underlying exposures (Ch.21; the personal umbrella is §B.3).
  • Stop-loss — the surviving underwritten piece of group health, on §B.5.

The point of the cards is orientation, not a complete product taxonomy. When a real submission arrives bundling four of these, you underwrite each piece on its own logic and price the package as a whole — which is exactly what the Harbor Steel file teaches you to do.


B.16 Summary table

All figures and bases below are constructed teaching simplifications; the authoritative treatment is the chapter. "Driver" = whether the line's result is decided chiefly by loss frequency or severity.

Line Covers (in brief) Exposure / rating base Key form(s) Primary hazards (driver) Top underwriting factors Ch.
Personal auto Liability + physical damage on household autos Per car-year; driver class, vehicle symbol, territory ISO PAP Collision, theft, injury tail (frequency) MVR, operators, vehicle, territory, credit/telematics where allowed 14
Homeowners Dwelling, contents, liability Per dwelling; Coverage A rebuild cost ISO HO-3 / HO-5 / HO-6 Attritional + catastrophe (severity) ITV, roof/ACV, cat exposure & wind deductible, claims history 15
Personal umbrella / HNW Excess personal liability; bespoke HNW property+liability Underlying exposures per \$M; HNW as account Carrier umbrella; HNW manuscript Liability severity; HNW cat Underlying-limit requirement, exposure count, appraisals, accumulation 16
Life Death benefit Per \$1,000 face; risk class Term / permanent contracts Mortality; anti-selection (severity) Age, tobacco, build, BP, history; evidence (APS/labs/MIB) 17
Health Medical expense ACA: enumerated factors; groups: experience; stop-loss: census ACA plans; stop-loss Morbidity; adverse selection (frequency) Group size/demographics, prior claims, stop-loss attachment 18
Commercial property Buildings, contents, BI Per \$100 value; SOV ISO property forms (CPP) Fire, wind, catastrophe (severity/accumulation) COPE, HPR vs. non-HPR, valuation/coinsurance, BI period, accumulation 19
BOP / small commercial Packaged property + GL for small business Class-rated (industry/size) ISO BOP Attritional; mix/class drift (frequency) Eligibility, class, STP/referral rules, mix 20
CGL Third-party BI/PD + personal & advertising injury Payroll, revenue, or area ISO CGL (occurrence/claims-made) Premises + long-tail products (mixed) Class/products hazard, trigger & retro date, additional insureds, the tail 21
Workers' comp Statutory no-fault employee injury benefits Per \$100 payroll; NCCI class WC&EL policy (statutory) Injury frequency + medical severity (frequency) Class/governing class, X-mod, payroll/audit, return-to-work 22
Commercial auto Owned/hired/non-owned vehicles Per power unit; radius, type; fleet rating ISO Business Auto Coverage Form Nuclear verdicts (severity) Driver selection (MVR, DQ file), radius/cargo, HNOA, telematics 23
Professional/E&O/D&O/EPL/Cyber Professional, management, employment, and cyber liability Revenue, assets, headcount, records Claims-made manuscript/proprietary Low-frequency, large/correlated (severity/volatility) Discipline & claims history, governance, controls (cyber), retro/tail 24
Surety Three-party guarantee of performance (credit) Penal sum / program size Statutory & obligee bond forms Principal default (rare, severe) The three C's: character, capacity, capital 25
Specialty (marine/aviation/energy/crop/parametric) Niche exposures beyond standard forms Line-specific (hull/acres/limit/trigger) London/marine, aviation, MPCI, parametric manuscript Severity/catastrophe; basis risk (parametric) Domain expertise, engineering/survey, accumulation, trigger design, program discipline 26
Reinsurance Insurance purchased by an insurer Structure over the cedent's book Treaty / facultative; QS, surplus, XOL, cat XOL Mis-structured cover; collectability Net-vs-gross, retention/limit vs. PML, reinsurer rating, cost 27

A last word on using this card

The lines look like separate countries, and the chapters teach them that way for clarity. But the underwriter's mind crosses the borders constantly. The adverse selection that drives a health pool is the same force behind a homeowners renewal book that retains only the risks no one else will write. The combined ratio judges personal auto and aviation by the identical standard. Credibility governs how much you trust a small fleet's loss run and a single life's family history alike. And the severity problem that defines commercial auto today is the same problem reinsurance was invented to absorb.

Learn the cards so you can stop needing them — and so that when an account lands that bundles property, GL, auto, workers' comp, and an umbrella into one submission, you read each piece in its own language and still price the whole as one risk. That is the Harbor Steel file, and it is the job.

🔍 Check Your Understanding. 1. Which two lines on this card are not priced from a pure-premium build-up, and what do you underwrite instead in each? (Surety — the three C's of credit; reinsurance — a structure over the cedent's book.) 2. Name three lines whose result is decided chiefly by severity rather than frequency. (Several qualify: commercial auto, aviation, professional/cyber, the catastrophe-exposed property lines.) 3. For each of personal auto, workers' comp, and CGL, state the exposure base. (Per car-year; per \$100 of payroll; payroll/revenue/area by class.)