Lines of business

ISO general liability rating

General liability rates on what a business does and where it does it. SelectRate resolves classification and territory from filed content, applies your carrier's multipliers and your program's rules on top, and returns a worksheet that shows how each coverage got to its number.

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What makes general liability its own problem

The unit of rating in general liability is the classification, not the place and not the asset.

A risk is described by what the business does, expressed as a classification with an exposure basis behind it: gross sales for one class, payroll for another, area or units for a third. Two accounts at the same address with the same revenue can rate completely differently because the activity is different. And most accounts are not one classification. They are several, sometimes at several locations, each with its own exposure.

That has three consequences for a rating system, and they are the ones that separate a system that works from a spreadsheet that mostly works.

Coverages rate separately and then combine. Premises and operations is not products and completed operations. They carry different loss costs, they respond to limits differently, and they have to appear as separate lines in the answer rather than as one blended number. A GL worksheet in SelectRate shows them as separate rows, each with its own loss cost, multiplier, basic rate, increased limit factor, adjusted rate and premium.

Territory is derived, not supplied. You send a location, and the system resolves the territory from the filed mapping. You do not send a territory and you should not be able to. A system that lets an integration supply the territory has moved a rating decision out into a caller that has no way of knowing whether it is right, and no way of proving it later.

Limits are a factor, not a lookup. The limits a risk buys change the rate through increased limit factors applied at the coverage level, which is why the same classification at the same exposure produces different premiums for different limit structures, and why the limit structure has to be on the worksheet.

General liability · the unit is the classification

ClassClassification AExposure basis: gross salesrates separately

ClassClassification BExposure basis: payrollrates separately

CoveragePremises / operationsOwn loss cost, own increased limit factorown row

CoverageProducts / completed operationsOwn loss cost, own increased limit factorown row

Policy limits apply across the riskPolicy premium

How a GL risk reaches a premium

The rating request carries the state, the limits and deductibles, and the locations. Each location carries enough geography to resolve territory, plus the classifications written there and the exposure for each.

Request payload

"risk": {
  "state": "CA",
  "eachOccurrenceLimit": 1000000,
  "aggregateLimit": 2000000,
  "medicalPaymentsLimit": 10000,
  "deductibles": [ { "amount": 500, "coverageType": "BI", "basis": "PerOccurrence" } ],
  "locations": [
    {
      "locationNumber": 1,
      "zipCode": "90723",
      "city": "Paramount",
      "county": "Los Angeles",
      "classifications": [
        { "classCode": "EXAMPLE-CLASS", "exposureAmount": 1000000 }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Send the ZIP code with its city and county, as the location lookup returns them. Territory is derived from the filed mapping and reported in the worksheet provenance. Values here are synthetic.

From there the engine resolves the bureau edition in force for the policy's effective date, applies your carrier layer, applies your program layer, and produces a result per coverage. Premium determination steps run last: the calculated premium, then minimum determination, then any policy writing minimum, each recorded with the rule that governed it and whether it actually applied.

The premium that comes back is the authoritative one. The worksheet exists so that anyone who disagrees with it can find out exactly where their disagreement lives.

What you configure, and what you do not

You do not configure the bureau base. It is maintained against circulars as they issue and it moves underneath you without a project.

What you configure is the part that makes your program yours:

Loss cost multipliers, by state

Set the program default once, then override the states that differ. States you do not touch stay exactly as published, which matters when you write thirty states and two of them are unusual.

Policy writing minimums, fees and rules

The things that turn a calculated premium into a premium you would actually bind.

Program eligibility and underwriting rules

What your program will and will not write, expressed as configuration rather than as a note in an underwriting guide that half the panel has not read.

Every one of those is effective dated. Creating next quarter's multipliers does not disturb what is live today, and the version you are working on does not become real until it is published with a date.

How configuration and versioning work

Testing a GL change before anyone quotes on it

A rate change in general liability is rarely one number. A multiplier moves and it moves across every class and every territory you write, which is exactly the situation where a spreadsheet check tells you nothing useful.

Every change is tested in Program Studio before it can go forward: rate complete test risks against the draft version and against what is published, and read the worksheet behind each result. A version cannot be submitted for release until at least one test has rated, and the review step shows exactly what it changes against the published configuration, state by state. A published version takes effect on its effective date and never changes afterwards.

The worksheet is what makes that test meaningful. It is not a total to eyeball. It is each coverage, each step, and the source behind each value, which means an underwriter who thinks a number is wrong can say which step they think is wrong.

The worksheet, and why it is the deliverable

For general liability the worksheet is the part of the product that gets used most and argued about least.

It shows, per location and per classification: the premium basis and the exposure, the rating units derived from it, and then a row per coverage carrying loss cost, loss cost multiplier, basic rate, increased limit factor, adjusted rate and premium. Underneath that sit the premium determination steps with their rule references. Alongside the numbers, each derived value carries a provenance statement: which filed mapping was selected for a territory, why it governed, and the document and page it came from.

It is captured at rating time and served back verbatim. It never changes. A run from three years ago returns byte for byte what it returned then, including its worksheet.

That is the difference between a quote you can defend and a quote you can only repeat.

General liability worksheet · structureImmutable

Columns on every coverage row

Loss costCompany multiplier Basic rateIncreased limit factor Adjusted ratePremium

RowPremises / operationsIts own loss cost, its own increased limit factorcoverage

RowProducts / completed operationsSeparate line, never blended into the firstcoverage

StepCalculated premiumProduced before any minimum is testeddetermination

StepMinimum determinationA test, not a multiplier. Carries the rule that governed itdetermination

StepPolicy writing minimumRecorded with whether it actually applieddetermination

WorksheetRow and column structure only. Loss costs, multipliers and factor values are licensed ISO content and are never published on this site.

After the bind: endorsements, cancellation and renewal on GL

A GL policy keeps rating after it is bound.

An endorsement that adds a location or changes an exposure is rated on the versions locked at the term's effective date, and the additional or return premium is calculated per coverage component, pro rata. Cancellation is pro rata too, with the return and earned premium shown before anything is confirmed.

At renewal, the risk is seeded from the policy as it stands after every accepted endorsement. On claims-made policies, the coverage basis and retroactive date carry forward unchanged, and a renewal that tries to change them is refused rather than quietly re-dated.

SelectRate rates and records every transaction on the policy term. Billing, invoicing, commissions and accounting stay in your systems.

How policy lifecycle rating works

Rating GL over the API

The Rating API is a channel onto the same engine, not a second rating path. Identical inputs, program and effective date produce an identical premium and an identical worksheet whether the request came from Workbench or from any rating channel you authorize.

For general liability specifically:

Leave programCode null and one request rates the risk against every carrier program you are entitled to for that state and effective date, each as an independent result. That is the same comparison your underwriters see in Workbench.
Each result carries its own status. A program whose configuration is not effective for the policy date returns no premium, rather than a premium from the wrong version.
Worksheets are not inlined, because a GL worksheet across several programs would dominate the response. Each result carries availability and a link; fetch the full worksheet when you need it.

Read the Rating API documentation

Common questions

Do we send a territory, or is it resolved?

Resolved. Send the location and the system derives the territory from the filed mapping, then reports in the worksheet provenance which mapping it selected and why it governed.

Can we see premises and operations separately from products and completed operations?

Yes. They are separate coverage rows on the worksheet, each with its own loss cost, multiplier, increased limit factor and premium.

What happens if a class is not configured for a state?

The result returns no premium, and says what is missing, rather than a guess. A rating system that produces a number it cannot support is worse than one that says it cannot produce one.

Can we rate the same risk across several carrier programs at once?

Yes, in Workbench and over the API. Each program is an independent result, on whichever version is effective for that policy date.

Does SelectRate issue the policy?

SelectRate records the bind and the policy term and rates every transaction on it. It does not issue policy documents, bill or keep accounts. Those stay in your systems.

Does an endorsement re-rate at today's rates?

No. It uses the rating versions locked at the term's effective date; the transaction date only drives the proration.

Bring a GL program and we will configure it on the call.

A state, a class, or the whole thing. You will see the worksheet it produces before you decide anything.

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