Property underwriting glossary
40 terms from property insurance underwriting, exposure management and geospatial analytics, defined in plain language.
A
- Accumulation
- Insured value clustered closely enough in one area, or under one peril, that a single event can affect a large share of it. Also called concentration. More →
- Anchoring
- The tendency for the first number seen to become the reference point for later judgments. In underwriting, a legacy or prior-year score colors each new assessment. More →
- Appetite
- The set of risks a carrier wants to write, as defined by its underwriting guidelines. More →
- Authorization region
- In UrbanStat, an area drawn as a polygon on the map to which an underwriting rule or moratorium applies. More →
- Availability bias
- Judging events that are easy to recall, because they are recent or vivid, as more probable than they are. More →
B
- Base rate
- The underlying long-run frequency of an event, independent of what happened most recently. More →
- Bind
- To commit the carrier to coverage. A bound policy is in force. More →
- Blind scoring
- Assessing a risk without seeing its previous score, so that the earlier number cannot anchor the new judgment. More →
C
- Catastrophe (cat) event
- A single event, such as a hurricane, wildfire or severe storm, that causes losses across many policies at once. More →
- Census tract
- A small statistical subdivision of a county defined by the US Census Bureau. Smaller and more uniform than most ZIP codes. More →
- Claim frequency
- The share of policies that produce a claim in a period. Most insurers see around 1 to 6%. More →
- Combined ratio
- Loss ratio plus expense ratio. Below 100% means an underwriting profit.
- Concentration
- See Accumulation. More →
- Core system
- The policy administration system a carrier runs its business on. UrbanStat has ready-made integrations with Duck Creek and OneShield. More →
E
- Endowment effect
- Valuing something more highly because one already owns it. In underwriting, renewing a policy that would be declined as new business. More →
- Exposure
- The insured value a carrier has at risk, in total or within a given area or peril. More →
- Exposure management
- Measuring how much insured value a carrier has in one place or under one peril, and limiting it so a single event cannot cause an unmanageable loss. More →
G
H
- Hazard
- A condition that makes a loss more likely or more severe at a location, such as wildfire, flood, hail or wind risk.
L
- Layer Builder
- UrbanStat’s tool for visualizing exposure concentration hot-spots beyond ZIP codes, street by street. More →
- Loss aversion
- The finding that a loss hurts roughly twice as much as an equal gain pleases, which leads to oversized reactions to realized losses. More →
- Loss ratio
- Incurred losses divided by earned premium. The main measure of underwriting results.
M
P
- Parcel data
- Property-level records for a land parcel, such as construction date, building value, other structures value and owner. More →
- Peril
- A cause of loss, such as fire, wind, hail, flood or earthquake.
- Permit data
- Records of building permits issued for a property. More →
- Portfolio (book of business)
- All the policies a carrier has in force.
R
- Renewal re-underwriting
- Periodically scoring the whole book as if every policy were a new application, to make quality gaps between renewals and new business visible. More →
- Risk Analysis API
- UrbanStat’s API for scoring a location: one call, more than 100 results, in under 5 seconds. More →
- Risk selection
- Deciding which submissions to accept, on what terms, and in what order to work them. More →
S
T
U
W
- Wildfire risk score
- A rating of how likely a location is to be affected by wildfire. UrbanStat’s runs from 0 to 100, with a level, a long-term probability, history and real-time alerts. More →
Z
- ZIP code
- A set of mail delivery routes defined by the US Postal Service. Widely used in insurance as a unit of area, which it was not designed to be. More →
No terms match that filter.