Optimize the Ask: A Smarter Strategy for Insurance Market Placement  

SEPTEMBER 2, 2025

In today’s dynamic insurance environment, rising premiums and tightening coverage terms are becoming the norm. Organizations that rely on traditional, reactive approaches to insurance placement — waiting for carrier quotes and accepting them without scrutiny — often end up with overpriced and inadequate coverage. To counter this, USI’s proactive strategy offers a more effective way to engage with and optimize the ask of the insurance markets.

Why Passive Placement Falls Short

Passive insurance placement typically involves submitting basic information to carriers and waiting for quotes. This method lacks strategic direction and fails to differentiate the organization’s risk profile. As a result, insurers may apply generic or unfavorable terms, leading to higher costs and limited coverage. In contrast, a proactive approach involves a broker pre-underwriting the risk, crafting a tailored market request, and actively managing the negotiation process.

The Power of Pre-Underwriting

Pre-underwriting is the cornerstone to achieving optimal coverage, terms, and pricing. The broker evaluates risks using the same tools and analytics that insurers use — but from the client’s perspective. This process includes:

• Reviewing exposure bases such as revenue, payroll, or square footage to identify more stable and favorable metrics
• Auditing classification codes to ensure they accurately reflect the work performed
• Assessing limits or coverage extensions to ensure they align with actual exposures
• Completing various models to identify the most cost-effective program design
• Reviewing claims history

Most underwriters look closely at loss history — mainly large losses. Therefore, brokers must provide proactive commentary on the severity and frequency of claims, such as:

• Why the claim(s) occurred and what measures the insured has taken to prevent or minimize them going forward, from either a loss control or claims handling perspective
• Specifics about claim(s) that are truly unexpected and not likely to occur again
• Potential subrogation

By conducting this analysis before engaging with carriers, organizations can present a more accurate and compelling risk profile, which often results in better pricing and coverage terms.

Casualty Insurance Negotiation Tactics

Three key strategies can significantly improve the outcome of general liability (GL), commercial automobile, and workers’ compensation insurance program negotiations:

1. Exposure Base Review: Carriers often use volatile metrics like sales or payroll to calculate premiums. By negotiating alternative bases — such as unit count or square footage — organizations can reduce premium fluctuations and achieve more predictable costs.
2. Classification Accuracy: Misclassified operations can lead to inflated premiums. Annual reviews and corrections help ensure that classification codes reflect actual activities, enabling fairer pricing.
3. Exposure Amount Validation: Confirming that exposure amounts accurately represent the organization’s risk helps avoid overpayment and supports more precise underwriting.

Property Insurance Optimization

Consider the example of a hotel owner in the Southeast facing rising premiums for hurricane and catastrophe coverage. By pre-underwriting property exposures and using advanced modeling tools, USI helped the organization identify key cost drivers and correct outdated building data. This led to:

• A 20% reduction in property premiums
• $100,000 in annual savings
• Improved coverage terms and conditions

The process involved evaluating building design, resiliency measures, and catastrophe modeling to present a refined risk profile to carriers. This second look revealed lower loss estimates, which strengthened the organization’s negotiating position.