Choosing the markets for a coastal property renewal

The market ranking for commercial property with fit, status and every reason, on illustrative data — **Market ranking.** Markets for commercial property (illustrative carriers): each with security, fit (strong, possible), status (quoted, declined with its reason) and why — rating, appetite, and capacity short of the limit asked.

An illustrative hotel group in Miami renews commercial property, general liability and umbrella. The property schedule is four beachfront-area locations worth $83.7M. The question every placement broker asks first is not “who is cheapest” but “who will even look at this” — and the honest answer is in the appetite table, not in memory.

This post follows the market selector: how it ranks every carrier per line against the appetite table, what “strong”, “possible” and “out” mean, why capacity short of the limit asked is a caution rather than a blocker, and how the marketing plan is chosen. Every carrier and figure is invented for the demo book; none of it is market data.

Use case card

Actors	Placement broker (adopts the plan), account executive, practice leader on referral
Trigger	The submission is approved; Analyze at the marketing stage
Lines	Commercial property, general liability, umbrella / excess
Agents involved	Market selector, market outreach drafter, placement compliance agent
Decisions	Adopt the marketing plan; add or remove a market; whether the surplus lines market is allowed
Outcome	A marketing plan with a written reason for every market in it and every market left out
What is measured	Markets approached per line, quotes per line, hit ratio by carrier, lines with a single quote

The appetite table

The market selector ranks against the broker’s carrier appetite table: for each carrier, the lines it writes with maximum capacity and premium range, core or selective appetite, the industries it targets and excludes (by NAICS prefix), the states it writes, its rating and financial size, admitted or surplus, whether the broker is appointed, and the broker’s own results with it — the share of what was sent that bound.

The carrier appetite table the market selector ranks against, with illustrative carriers — **Carrier appetite** (every carrier invented): lines with capacity and premium range, security and market type, industries targeted and excluded, states, and the broker’s bound-to-sent ratio.

How a carrier is scored

For each line, every active carrier is checked. Some reasons rule a carrier out outright: it doesn’t write the line, it excludes the client’s industry, it doesn’t write in the client’s state, or it is rated below the A- security floor. Everything else adjusts a score and adds a stated reason or caution:

Reason	Effect
Starting score for a carrier not ruled out	60
Core (not selective) appetite for the line	+10
Targets the client’s industry	+10
The broker’s bound-to-sent ratio with the carrier	+30 × ratio
The incumbent on the line	+8
Each caution: selective appetite, capacity short of the limit, premium outside its range, no appointment, surplus without clearance	−12 each

A carrier with no cautions is strong; with cautions, possible; with a blocker, out. Ranks sort strong before possible before out, then by score. The plan takes the best four per line that are not out, and always keeps the incumbent.

flowchart TD C["Every active carrier,
per line"] --> B{"Writes the line?
Industry not excluded?
Writes the state?
Rated A- or better?"} B -- no --> O["Out
with the blocker stated"] B -- yes --> S["Score 60
plus appetite, industry,
results, incumbent"] S --> K{"Any cautions?"} K -- none --> ST["Strong"] K -- some --> PO["Possible
minus 12 per caution"] ST --> PL["Plan: best 4 per line,
incumbent always kept"] PO --> PL PL --> H{"Placement broker
adopts the plan"} style O fill:#fdecec,stroke:#e57373 style H fill:#e8f8f4,stroke:#10b981,stroke-width:2px

The ranking for the hotel group’s property

The incumbent, a surplus lines carrier rated A, is strong: core appetite, capacity up to $100M covers the $83.7M asked. Three admitted carriers are only possible because their maximum capacity — $30M, $50M, $75M — is short of the limit asked. The engine words that as a caution, “a layer, or a lower limit”, not as a blocker: a broker can build a layered program out of capacity that is individually short. A regional admitted carrier whose appetite table lists Midwest and Northeast states was approached anyway and declined for exactly that reason — the declination is logged with its reason, and it counts toward the surplus lines diligent effort later.

Step by step

From an approved submission to an adopted marketing plan Illustrative carriers and figures; day numbers count down to the effective date.

Ranking computedEnginesDay 60

Per line, every carrier ranked with reasons, cautions and blockers. In one run on another placement the market selector ranked 15 market-lines into a plan and ruled out 34 carrier-lines.

Plan preparedmarket_selector_agentDay 60

“Adopt a marketing plan: N carriers across 3 lines”, the incumbent kept on each line, every pick with its reasons. The agent never invents an appetite or a rating.

Plan adoptedPlacement brokerDay 59

Accepted, or changed to add a market the broker has a relationship with. Either way the plan carries the broker’s name on the decision record.

Outreach draftedoutreach_agentDay 59

One submission e-mail per planned market, attaching the approved version — see the outreach post.

Late-marketing controlRules StudioDay 45

If no market has been approached inside 45 days, MARKETING_LATE refers the placement to a practice leader.

What the run looked like

One market selector run's trace on illustrative data: status, level, model, tokens, cost and time, and the three steps — **A run, traced.** One market selector run, traced (illustrative data): what the engines said, the model step with its model, tokens, cost and seconds, and what was prepared for a person.

Every agent step is recorded with the model it used (Claude Haiku 5.5 by default for the agents), the tokens, the cost and the time, and the trace shows the three steps: what the placement’s data and the engines say, what the model reasoned, and what was prepared for a person.

What the agents prepared, and what each rests on

Agent	What it prepared	What it cites	Who decides
Market selector	Adopt the marketing plan per line	Appetite table, the broker’s results, appointments, ratings	Placement broker
Outreach drafter	Send the submission to the planned markets (dry run)	The approved submission and the plan	Placement broker
Compliance	Note which picks are surplus lines and what diligent effort they will need	Market types, the home state	Compliance / broker

Edge cases

What happens	What InsightPlacement does
A carrier rated B++	Out on every line: below the A- floor. It can still be quoted if a broker approaches it, and the comparison flags it hard.
A surplus carrier on a placement not cleared for surplus lines	A caution: “needs three admitted declinations first”.
A carrier the broker isn’t appointed with	A caution, and a soft flag on any quote; selecting it fires `NOT_APPOINTED`.
New business with no expiring premium	The premium-range check uses the client’s budget if one is set.