SOV AI

Glossary

P&C reference

SOV & P&C insurance glossary

Plain-English definitions of the Schedule of Values and commercial Property & Casualty terms brokers, account managers, and underwriters work with every day. New to SOVs? Start with the complete guide to the Schedule of Values.

Schedule of Values(SOV): A structured list of every insured location in a commercial property portfolio, capturing the values and underwriting attributes carriers need to price the risk. A typical SOV row includes the address, total insured value, construction type, occupancy, year built, square footage, number of stories, and protection details. The SOV is the foundation of a commercial property submission — carriers quote from it, and errors in it flow straight through to the policy.
COPE: An acronym for the four categories of property underwriting data: Construction, Occupancy, Protection, and Exposure. Construction describes what the building is made of; Occupancy is what happens inside; Protection covers fire suppression and responding services; and Exposure captures surrounding hazards such as wind, flood, brush, or neighboring risks. Complete COPE data on every location is what separates a quotable SOV from one that gets returned for more information.
Total Insured Value(TIV): The full replacement value of a location or portfolio for insurance purposes, usually the sum of building value, business personal property (contents), and business income or time-element exposure. Portfolio TIV drives capacity decisions, catastrophe modeling, and premium. Understating TIV to lower premium exposes the insured to coinsurance penalties at claim time.
Replacement Cost Value(RCV): The cost to rebuild or replace property with materials of like kind and quality at current prices, without deduction for depreciation. RCV coverage pays to make the insured whole after a loss, subject to policy limits. Because RCV ignores wear and age, it is almost always higher than actual cash value and is the basis carriers prefer to see on a commercial SOV.
Actual Cash Value(ACV): Replacement cost value minus depreciation for age, wear, and obsolescence. An ACV settlement pays what the property was worth at the moment of loss, not what it costs to replace new. Roofs on older buildings are frequently settled on an ACV basis even when the rest of the policy is written at replacement cost, so the valuation basis matters greatly to the insured.
ISO Construction Class: The Insurance Services Office classification of a building's structural fire resistance, running from Frame (Class 1) through Joisted Masonry, Non-Combustible, Masonry Non-Combustible, Modified Fire Resistive, up to Fire Resistive (Class 6). More fire-resistant classes generally earn better property rates because they are less likely to suffer a total loss. Getting the construction class right is one of the highest-impact fields on any SOV.
Occupancy: How a building is used — office, retail, warehouse, restaurant, apartment, manufacturing, and so on. Occupancy drives both the likelihood and severity of loss: a woodworking shop or restaurant carries far more fire hazard than a professional office. Carriers map occupancy to rating classes and sometimes decline risks whose occupancy falls outside their appetite.
Protection Class: A 1-to-10 rating (also called the Public Protection Classification, or PPC) assigned by ISO that grades a property's fire protection, from Class 1 (best) to Class 10 (essentially unprotected). It reflects the quality of the responding fire department, water supply, and communications. A property's distance to the nearest fire station and to a fire hydrant feeds directly into this score and into the property premium.
Building Code Effectiveness Grading Schedule(BCEGS): An ISO program that grades how well a community adopts and enforces its building codes, on a 1-to-10 scale. Communities with strong code enforcement (lower BCEGS numbers) tend to sustain less catastrophe damage, so carriers may offer credits on new construction in well-graded jurisdictions. BCEGS is especially relevant for wind and earthquake exposure.
Wind Pool: A state-sponsored residual insurance mechanism — often called a Beach Plan, FAIR Plan, or Citizens-style entity — that provides wind and hail coverage for coastal properties the standard market will not write. Wind pools exist in hurricane-exposed states such as Florida, Texas, and the Carolinas. Whether a location sits inside a designated wind pool zone affects both availability and pricing of windstorm coverage.
Flood Zone: A FEMA designation describing a property's flood risk on the National Flood Insurance Program maps. Zones beginning with A or V are Special Flood Hazard Areas with a 1% or greater annual chance of flooding and typically require flood insurance for federally backed mortgages; X zones carry lower risk. Flood zone determines whether NFIP or private flood coverage is needed and heavily influences rate.
Distance to Coast: The straight-line distance from an insured building to the nearest coastline, a key input for windstorm and storm-surge rating. Properties within the first mile or two of the coast face the highest hurricane wind and surge exposure and often trigger separate wind deductibles or wind pool placement. Many carriers use tiered distance-to-coast bands to set catastrophe pricing.
Additional Insured: A person or entity, other than the named insured, added to a policy so that they enjoy coverage for liability arising out of the named insured's operations or premises. Common examples include landlords, lenders, and project owners named on a contractor's policy. Additional insured status is granted by endorsement and is a frequent contractual requirement in leases and construction agreements.
Named Insured: The person or organization specifically listed on the policy declarations as the primary holder of the coverage. The named insured has the broadest rights and duties under the contract, including the right to receive claim payments and the duty to pay premium. On commercial accounts there is often a first named insured plus additional named insureds representing related entities.
Loss Run: A carrier-produced report of an insured's claims history over a policy period, typically the trailing three to five years. Each entry shows the date of loss, cause, amounts paid and reserved, and claim status. Underwriters use loss runs to judge frequency and severity trends, so a clean, complete set of loss runs across every carrier and year is essential to a competitive submission.
Blanket vs. Scheduled Limits: Two ways to structure property limits across multiple locations. A scheduled policy assigns a specific limit to each location, and coverage there is capped at that figure. A blanket limit pools coverage across all listed locations so a single larger loss can draw on the full amount, which better protects insureds whose individual values are understated — provided the SOV values are accurate enough to satisfy the blanket's margin clause.
Business Income: Coverage that replaces the profit and continuing operating expenses an insured loses while its property is being repaired after a covered loss, also called business interruption. It is a time-element coverage: what matters is how long the operation is down, not just the physical damage. Business income values belong on the SOV because they add to TIV and affect both capacity and premium.
Coinsurance: A policy clause requiring the insured to carry limits equal to a stated percentage — commonly 80%, 90%, or 100% — of a property's full value. If the insured is underinsured at the time of loss, the coinsurance penalty reduces the claim payment proportionally, even on a partial loss. Accurate SOV values are the best defense against a nasty coinsurance surprise.
EIFS: Exterior Insulation and Finish System, a multi-layer synthetic stucco cladding. Early barrier-style EIFS gained a poor reputation for trapping moisture behind the wall and causing hidden rot, which makes it an underwriting flag on some property risks. Carriers may ask whether EIFS is present and whether it is a drainable system, so it is worth capturing on the SOV where known.
Secondary Water Resistance(SWR): A supplemental sealing layer applied to the roof deck beneath the primary covering, so that if shingles or tiles blow off in a windstorm, water still cannot easily penetrate the deck. SWR is a recognized wind-mitigation feature that can earn premium credits in hurricane-prone states. It is one of several roof mitigation attributes underwriters look for on coastal SOVs.
Opening Protection: Measures that protect a building's windows, doors, and other openings from windborne debris during a storm — impact-rated glazing, shutters, or code-approved coverings. Because a breached opening lets wind pressurize and lift a building from the inside, opening protection materially lowers hurricane loss potential and is a standard wind-mitigation credit. It is a required field on most coastal wind applications.
Roof Geometry: The shape of a roof — hip, gable, flat, or complex — which strongly influences how it performs in high wind. Hip roofs, sloping on all four sides, shed wind loads better than gable roofs and typically earn mitigation credit. Roof geometry, along with roof age and cover type, is a core wind-rating attribute captured on coastal Schedules of Values.
Year Built: The year a structure was originally constructed, a proxy for the building code in force and the condition of major systems. Newer buildings generally reflect stronger wind and seismic codes and updated wiring, plumbing, and roofing, all of which reduce loss potential. Underwriters frequently pair year built with year of last roof, electrical, and HVAC updates to assess the true age of the risk.
Sprinklered: Whether a building is equipped with an automatic fire sprinkler system, and if so, to what extent. Fully sprinklered buildings suffer far smaller fire losses on average and receive meaningful property rate credits. The SOV should note not just yes or no but the type and coverage of the system, since a partial or non-monitored system carries a different credit than a full, central-station-monitored one.
Statement of Values: A signed document, closely related to the Schedule of Values, in which the insured attests to the values reported for each location. Carriers may require a Statement of Values to hold the insured accountable for the accuracy of the figures used to set limits and premium. In practice the terms Schedule of Values and Statement of Values are often used interchangeably, though the latter emphasizes the insured's certification.
Wind/Hail Deductible: A separate, usually larger deductible that applies specifically to windstorm and hail losses, often expressed as a percentage of the insured value rather than a flat dollar amount. In hurricane-exposed regions a named-storm or hurricane deductible of 2% to 5% of TIV is common. Because percentage deductibles can be very large on high-value locations, they are a critical term for both broker and insured to understand.
Geocoding: The process of converting a street address into precise latitude and longitude coordinates. Accurate geocoding lets carriers run catastrophe models, determine distance to coast, pull the correct flood zone, and detect concentrations of risk. A location that geocodes to the wrong spot can be mispriced or wrongly accepted, so clean, verified coordinates are an underrated but important SOV field.
Excess & Surplus Lines(E&S): Coverage placed with non-admitted carriers for risks the standard admitted market declines — often high-hazard occupancies, large catastrophe-exposed property, or accounts with adverse loss history. E&S business is typically accessed through wholesale brokers and managing general agents, and it is where many complex commercial property SOVs ultimately find a market.

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