Construction contractors, $30M and up · Florida, Tennessee and the Southeast
Your DOT record, your licence history, your safety log, your own website — all public, all dated, all read before the application is opened. You're being priced on a file you've never seen, and the questions it raises get answered by whoever is closest to the phone.
One Florida contractor's public file, September 2026. Entity disguised; every figure is public record in kind.
On an account your size nothing gets priced silent — the quote comes with a list of questions. They land at your broker's desk ten days before renewal, get answered from memory, and that hurried answer becomes your file for a year.
A problem your broker explains before the carrier finds it reads as a firm that fixed something. The same problem discovered by the underwriter reads as a firm that hid it. Same facts, different premium.
Auditable lines are priced on an estimate and trued up a year later. A stale one is either your cash sitting with the carrier for twelve months or a bill after audit. Nobody re-reads the estimate unless someone is paid to.
An ACORD form doesn't say your largest job went from $2M to $12M and your controls grew with it. If nobody writes that sentence, the underwriter sees growth outrunning management — and prices the excess accordingly.
The record is the record. What varies from broker to broker is whether anyone reads it before the carrier does — and what they say about it. Below: one real file, entity disguised.
Notice what column three is not. It isn't a discount request and it isn't a cover letter. It's the narrative the underwriter was going to have to assemble for himself — written first, by someone on your side, with the evidence attached.
And notice who has never seen it. Ask your broker for the narrative he sent the market with your last submission — the one dated before today, not the one he'll write this week. Not the ACORD; the cover letter. Most owners have never read theirs. Read it for one thing: does it tell the story your file can't? If it does, you're brokered the way most contractors only think they are. If it doesn't, that is the whole conversation.
The read
Because she's the one who has to live with it. A broker-of-record letter moves the relationship, not the policies. Your carriers, your policy numbers, your open claims and any audit in progress stay exactly where they are. What moves is who the carrier takes instructions from.
What your office sends, once: the renewal package you already assembled for the last renewal — schedules, payroll by class, the certificate-holder list. We take it as it is; nobody rebuilds it. Certificate holders transfer in one file and reissue from our side — which means every holder on your list gets a new certificate with a new agent on it, and that is the week the GCs' compliance desks call. They call our service team, not you; the first week's certificates go out the same day they're requested because that is the week people watch. An audit dispute open on the day the letter lands is argued by us from that day, with the file where it sits.
Who does the work when Cole is on a plane. Certificates and endorsements come from a construction service team, not from a producer's inbox. Claims are handled by an in-house claims advocacy team — former carrier adjusters — who are notified on every claim alongside the carrier. Bonding sits in-house with our surety underwriter, read alongside your current surety, not in place of it. You will have a name and a direct line for each before anything moves.
What it costs in hours: the package you already have, one conversation with whoever handles certificates and audits, and signatures. If it costs more than that, we have done it wrong.
One person reads your file, writes the read, and picks up the phone — with a construction practice behind him.
Construction only. Behind the read: a construction service team on certificates and endorsements; an in-house claims advocacy team of former adjusters; an in-house surety underwriter; and in-house loss control for fleet, driver and jobsite programs — including work over water.