Every term a contract will throw at you, and what it costs.

The vocabulary a policy uses to describe itself — who counts as an insured, what has to happen for cover to respond, and which dates decide whether a claim falls inside the period. Occurrence versus claims-made and retroactive date belong here because they determine whether a policy answers at all.

The named products themselves: general liability, commercial property, cyber, professional liability, and the specialist floaters that cover property while it is in transit or on somebody else’s site. Each entry describes what the form is built to pay for and where its edges are.

The amendments that change a policy after it is written, and the certificates that evidence it to a landlord, lender or client. Additional insured, waiver of subrogation, primary and non-contributory, and the ACORD forms that carry them.

What happens after a loss — how it is reported, how the amount owed is worked out, and who can pursue whom once it is paid. Actual cash value and replacement cost sit here rather than under coverage because they are valuation methods, not policies.

The numbers that cap what a policy pays and set what the insured absorbs first. Aggregate against per-occurrence, self-insured retentions, and whether defense costs come out of the limit or sit outside it.

How a carrier decides whether to write a risk and what to charge for it: class codes, experience modification, loss runs, premium audit, and the exemptions that change who has to be counted. Business continuity planning is filed here because it is the corpus’s only risk-control term and a hub of one is no use to anybody.

Terms that arrive from a lease, a subcontract or a vendor agreement rather than from the policy — hold harmless, indemnification, vicarious liability, tort. They describe obligations a business has already taken on before the insurance question is asked.

How the market is structured: admitted against surplus lines, financial strength ratings, state guaranty funds and monopolistic funds, and the broker of record letter that decides who controls an account.