What is policy checking?
Policy checking is the disciplined comparison of the policy a carrier actually issued against a known baseline — the expiring policy at renewal, or the quote you accepted at new business — to confirm the coverage matches what the client was promised and what changed year over year.
It exists because carriers re-underwrite at renewal. Forms change edition, limits and deductibles move, endorsements drop off, exclusions get added — and the declarations page rarely announces any of it. Policy checking is how an agency catches the silent change before the client discovers it at claim time.
What a real policy check compares
A thorough check goes well past the dec page:
- The form schedule — every ISO/AAIS form and endorsement by number and edition date, with additions, removals and edition changes flagged.
- Limits, sublimits, deductibles and retentions — line by line against the baseline.
- Named insured(s), additional insureds and their endorsement forms.
- Coverage-form editions, which can narrow or broaden the base grant of coverage between years.
- Manuscript (non-standard) endorsements, which carry no library meaning and need human interpretation.
Why it's an E&O control, not just good service
The most common agents' errors-and-omissions claims are failure to procure or maintain the coverage the client reasonably expected. A documented, consistently followed checking procedure is a direct defense. Some E&O programs — including those tied to the Big 'I' Best Practices standards — also offer premium credits for agencies that pass a documented procedures audit (often an Operational Improvement Review). The credit is earned by that audit, not by any one tool; consistent, documented policy checking is one of the procedures such an audit evaluates. Confirm eligibility with your own carrier.
Doing it consistently is the hard part
Reading one renewal carefully is easy; reading every renewal the same way, every time, and documenting it, is where programs break down. BindCheck runs the line-by-line comparison automatically — form schedule, dec-page numbers, endorsements — flags manuscript items for your review, and saves the diff as your documentation, so consistency stops depending on who's least busy that week.
Frequently asked questions
Who does policy checking?
Historically a checker at the agency, or an outsourced BPO team. Increasingly, software does the deterministic comparison and a human at the agency reviews the flagged changes — keeping judgment in-house while automating the grind.
Is policy checking the same as an insurance-to-value review?
No. ITV asks whether limits are adequate to the exposure; policy checking asks whether the issued policy matches the expected/prior coverage. Both matter; policy checking is the renewal-time comparison.
Diff your first renewal free — upload the prior policy and the renewal, and see what changed in about a minute. No signup wall, no demo call.