SOV
Statement of Values: a schedule listing all insured property locations with their addresses, values, and construction details.
What It Is
A Statement of Values (SOV) is a detailed schedule that lists every property location insured under a commercial property policy, along with the key characteristics and values for each location. The SOV is the foundational document for property underwriting, providing the data carriers need to price coverage, model catastrophe exposure, and assess concentration risk.
A complete SOV includes for each location: address with geocoding (latitude/longitude), COPE data (construction type, occupancy, protection class, external exposure), building replacement cost, business personal property value, business income and extra expense value, and total insured value. Additional fields may include year built, number of stories, square footage, sprinkler status, alarm systems, distance to fire station and coast, and any special hazards.
SOV quality directly impacts underwriting outcomes. Carriers receiving a complete, well-organized SOV with geocoded addresses can run accurate cat models and price confidently. Incomplete SOVs force carriers to make conservative assumptions, particularly in catastrophe modeling, where missing geocoding causes the model to spread risk across the entire zip code rather than pinpointing the actual location, often increasing the modeled loss.
Why It Matters for Brokers
The SOV is the single most important document in commercial property placement. Brokers who submit clean, complete SOVs receive faster and more competitive quotes. Data quality issues in the SOV are the most common cause of property submission delays and declinations. For multi-location accounts, SOV management is an ongoing responsibility that requires annual updates and validation.
Real-World Example
A broker submits a 28-location retail chain's property account with a $42M TIV. The initial SOV is missing geocoding for 12 locations and has no COPE data for 8 locations. The carrier's cat model assigns conservative default assumptions, producing a 250-year PML of $18M and a quote of $168,000. After the broker completes the SOV with full geocoding and COPE data, the remodeled PML drops to $11M. The revised quote comes in at $124,000, saving $44,000, a 26% reduction solely from better data.
Common Mistakes
- 1Submitting SOVs without geocoding, forcing carriers to use zip-code-level cat modeling that invariably produces higher loss estimates.
- 2Not updating the SOV annually for new locations, dispositions, value changes, and construction improvements.
How brokerageaudit.com Handles This
brokerageaudit.com's Submission Intake module includes an SOV builder that validates data completeness, auto-geocodes addresses, and flags missing COPE information. The system maintains a master SOV for each account that carries forward annually, requiring the broker to confirm or update each location rather than rebuilding from scratch at every renewal.