Field Notes
Underwriting research, written down.
Perspective from the front lines of commercial underwriting — the patterns we see across submissions, the methods behind the workbench, and the occasional strong opinion. Written for underwriters and the people who hire them.
The five things every commercial snapshot should answer in under a minute.
If your research process can't answer these five questions before you've finished the broker email, you're underwriting blind. Here's what we put first — and why.
NAICS reclassification at renewal: the quiet premium leak.
14% of accounts in a typical mid-market book carry a NAICS code that no longer reflects the business they actually run. Here's how we flag them — and what to ask first.
Why "no data found" is a finding, not a failure.
If a regulator filing doesn't exist for an account, that's a signal — not a gap. How we report what we couldn't find, and why it matters at audit time.
Hospitality renewals: three signals your team is probably missing.
Health dept history, NLRB activity, and wage program rollouts all move risk in ways that don't show up in a standard broker packet. A short field guide.
Defensibility ≠ confidence. Why we score them separately.
A high-confidence verdict can still be a low-defensibility snapshot if the sources are thin. Here's why we expose both numbers, and how to read them together.