Why loss runs take so long, and what actually speeds them up
Every new-business submission and every remarket waits on the same thing: five years of claims history from the insured's prior carriers. Underwriters won't quote without it, and agents spend a surprising part of their week chasing it.
The odd part is that pulling a loss run is not hard for a carrier. Most of the wait happens before and after that step.
Where the time actually goes
The request goes to the wrong place. Some carriers take loss-run requests by email, some through a website form, some by fax, and some only on their own form. A policy placed through a wholesaler or MGA usually has to go to them, not the carrier. A request sent the wrong way often just sits.
Nobody is authorized yet. A carrier releases claims history to the agent of record on its own policy. If you're a new agent shopping the account, the carrier needs the insured's written authorization first. Getting a busy business owner to print, sign and return a letter can take longer than the carrier does.
Nobody follows up. A request that isn't answered in a week needs a nudge, then another. That's easy to do for one account and very hard to do for forty.
The answer is a PDF. When the loss runs do come back, each carrier formats them differently. Someone still has to read five documents and turn them into one picture an underwriter can use.
What speeds it up
None of the fixes are exotic. They just have to happen every time:
- Ask one question per policy: are you the broker of record? That answer decides whether the insured needs to sign, what letter goes out, and where it goes.
- Send it the way that carrier takes it. Keep a directory of how each carrier and wholesaler accepts requests, and use it.
- Make signing easy. One signature, on the insured's phone, covering every carrier that needs it. Send the requests the moment it's done.
- Follow up on a schedule. Every open request gets a follow-up date, and the ones that stall come back to a person with a suggested next step.
- Read the results into one table. Claims, paid, reserved and loss ratio, across every carrier, with each number traceable to the line it came from.
Where loss.run fits
That list is what loss.run does. You name the insured and answer the broker-of-record question for each prior policy. loss.run sends, gets the signature when one is needed, chases, and reads what comes back into one loss history you can export or drop into a PolicyOS submission.
It's free for agencies and part of PolicyOS. Carriers and MGAs can also answer requests automatically from their own claims data, so the agencies they work with stop waiting on email.
loss.run is opening in waves. Get early access.