There are many coverages you should review when switching carriers. It’s important to have a full, thorough review with an insurance professional to make sure the coverages you’re looking for can be provided by the new carrier.

A contractor we work with came in last fall ready to switch carriers because a competitor quoted his general liability twenty percent lower. We pulled his current policy, sat down for an hour, and found three things: his tools and equipment coverage was capped at $5,000 when his actual mobile inventory was closer to $40,000, his hired and non-owned auto was missing entirely, and his policy had a roofing exclusion that nobody had mentioned. The cheaper quote also had the roofing exclusion. The savings would have been real, and so would the uncovered claim if anything went sideways. That is why a coverage-by-coverage review is the only honest way to compare business insurance before you switch.

Start with the declarations page from every active policy

Before any quoting happens, gather the declarations pages for every line of business you carry. That includes general liability, commercial property, business auto, workers’ compensation, professional liability, cyber, umbrella, and any specialty endorsements. The declarations page lists the named insured, the policy period, every coverage limit, deductible, and the endorsements that modify the base form. Without these documents a new quote is a guess. We cover the document checklist in our explanation of why declarations pages matter for an accurate quote.

General liability: limits, exclusions, and the operations classification

General liability is where most mismatches hide. Two policies can both say $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate and still be completely different. The class code your operations are written under determines what is actually covered. A general contractor coded as a handyman has a problem the day a real claim comes in. Read the exclusions section line by line. Look for residential construction exclusions, subcontractor warranties, prior work exclusions, and additional insured language. If you need to add a customer as an additional insured by contract, the new policy has to allow it. A full breakdown of general liability coverage is on our product page.

Commercial property and business income

Property coverage is where under-insurance becomes a real problem fast. Replacement cost on a building, contents, and business income should all be reviewed against current values, not the numbers from when the policy was first written five years ago. Coinsurance clauses can quietly cut a claim payment if values are not kept current. Business income coverage, sometimes called business interruption, should reflect your actual gross earnings and the realistic period it would take to rebuild and restart. Want a commercial property quote that uses current valuations? We start there before anything else.

Workers’ compensation and class codes

Workers’ comp premiums are driven by payroll and class codes. The wrong class code means you are either overpaying or underpaying, and underpaying gets corrected at audit with a big bill at the end of the year. A new agency should review every class code on the current policy and confirm it matches the actual job duties of your employees. We walk through the class-code piece in detail in our workers’ comp class-code review FAQ, and our workers’ compensation page covers what we look at during a quote.

Commercial auto, hired and non-owned, and cyber

Three coverages that get forgotten more than any others during a switch:

• Commercial auto — confirm every vehicle is listed with the correct radius of operation, hired and non-owned coverage is included, and drive-other-car endorsements match your needs. See our commercial auto coverage page.
• Hired and non-owned auto — if any employee ever uses a personal vehicle for work errands, you need this even without company-owned vehicles.
• Cyber liability — if you take payments, store customer data, or use email for invoicing, cyber coverage is no longer optional. Most general liability policies exclude data-breach response entirely.
• Umbrella — review the underlying limits the umbrella requires. If you change a primary limit during the switch, the umbrella attachment point may need to change too.
• Certificates of insurance — gather a list of every party that holds a current certificate so they can be reissued. We explain the reissue process in how switching affects certificates.

How the review actually gets done

A thorough review takes about an hour. We sit down with every declarations page, walk through each coverage form, and write down what works, what is missing, and what is over-insured. Then we quote with carriers that can match or improve on what is there. If a coverage the new carrier cannot provide is critical to your operations, the conversation stops. Saving money is not worth losing a coverage you needed. Need a starting point? Request a commercial insurance quote and we will run the same review on your current program. You can also read about moving all your business lines together if you are considering a full transition.