Claims history
Loss runs: your insurance credit report.
≈ 2 MIN READ
Before any underwriter prices your business, they read your loss runs — carrier-issued reports listing every claim on your policies, with dates, descriptions, amounts paid, and amounts still reserved. Think of them as a credit report for your insurance: a few pages of history that heavily influence what you pay and who wants your business at all.
What underwriters read in them
- Frequency — a steady drip of small claims is read as a management signal, and it often worries underwriters more than one large loss. (The same logic drives your experience mod.)
- Severity — how bad the bad ones were, and whether your operations make a repeat plausible.
- Open claims and reserves — money a carrier has set aside for unresolved claims counts against you even though it hasn't been paid. Old claims left open with stale reserves quietly inflate your history.
- Patterns — three lifting injuries in two years tells an underwriter something specific. So does a clean stretch after a rough one: it reads as a business that fixed something.
Getting yours
Loss runs come from each carrier, and you're entitled to them. Most markets want three to five years (currently valued — meaning recent enough to reflect today's reserves) before they'll quote. As your agent, we request them for you as part of marketing your account; if you're shopping mid-relationship, requesting your own loss runs is a routine ask that your current agent or carrier must honor.
Keeping them clean
You can't rewrite history, but you can manage it. Review open claims with your agent before renewal season and push for closure where claims are resolved in everything but paperwork. Question reserves that look stale or oversized. Report claims promptly when they happen — late reporting makes everything cost more. And when there's a story behind a spike (one bad project, a problem that's since been fixed, a unit you sold), make sure it gets told in the submission. Numbers without context get priced without sympathy; a documented fix is one of the most persuasive things an underwriter can read.
This article is general information, not advice about your specific situation, and not a quote, binder, or contract of insurance.