A Coverage Gap Review Template for Teams Without a Risk Manager

Purpose of the Template

If your company doesn't have a dedicated risk manager, someone still needs to handle that responsibility. Often, it's the business continuity manager, CFO, or an operations lead. This template provides a structured agenda for a pre-renewal review with your broker and carrier.

The aim is straightforward: identify exposures before a claim does. Many insureds discover, mid-claim, that they lack errors and omissions coverage. A repeatable review process helps catch these issues early.

This template is designed for middle market companies, which a major carrier defines as those with up to a billion dollars in revenue. At this scale, your risks are complex, but your internal resources may not be.

Prerequisites

Gather these items before starting. The review's effectiveness depends on the quality of your inputs.

• Current policy forms and endorsements, not just declarations pages or certificates
• A list of operating locations, including any new or planned facilities
• Details of your vehicle and distribution fleet, if applicable
• Information on service lines and contracts where you advise, design, or deliver professional work
• Prior-carrier service pain points (e.g., slow claims handling, lack of loss control visits)
• Loss runs from the last 3 to 5 years
• A rough view of your operational footprint, state by state

Ensure your broker and your carrier's underwriter or risk engineer are involved in the conversation. Carriers in this segment often have dedicated risk engineers, so request one.

The Template

Copy this into a document and work through it section by section.

SECTION 1: Operations Inventory

1. List every location where you manufacture, store, serve customers, or house equipment.
2. For each: primary activity, approximate headcount, hazardous materials on site (Y/N).
3. Planned changes in the next 12 months: new facilities, acquisitions, international expansion.

SECTION 2: Coverage Map

For each exposure below, record: Covered (Y/N/Unsure), Which policy and form, Limit, Retention, Key exclusions.

• General liability
• Auto liability and physical damage
• Workers' compensation
• Property (including Business Interruption and Contingent Business Interruption)
• Umbrella/excess
• Professional liability/errors and omissions
• Environmental/pollution
• Inland marine (equipment in transit, at job sites)
• Multinational (policies, admitted coverage, local compliance abroad)
• Cyber (Stand-Alone Cyber Policy or Cyber Endorsement)

SECTION 3: Gap Questions

Answer each in writing and flag any "I don't know."

• Do we deliver advice, design, software, or services where a client could allege we got it wrong? Which policy responds?
• Do we operate a facility where a release of a pollutant could occur? Does our general liability form provide any pollution coverage, and what is the sublimit?
• Do we own, lease, or hire vehicles? Do we operate our own distribution fleet?
• Do we have foreign operations, employees, or inventory?
• Do we depend on a supplier or customer whose outage would stop us?
• If we lost a key facility for 30 days, what would our loss be, and where does it land?

SECTION 4: Jurisdiction Check

• Where do we have the most customer, employee, or vehicle exposure?
• Which of those states are known for high attorney involvement in claims?
• Does our limit structure (primary plus umbrella) reflect that, or only our national average?

SECTION 5: Carrier Service Plan

Request a written plan covering: risk engineering visits (frequency and scope), new-facility reviews, loss control recommendations and who tracks them, claim reporting instructions, and named contacts.

SECTION 6: Structure Review

• Are we paying for guaranteed cost when we have the financial capacity to retain more?
• Would a large deductible structure make sense (some carriers offer options around $100,000 or $250,000 deductibles for growing companies)?
• What collateral or cash flow demands would a deductible program add?

SECTION 7: Action Log

Item / Owner / Due date / Status.

Customizing the Template

Section 1 is critical. A manufacturer will list hazardous materials and process details; a retailer will list foot traffic and premises hazards. Add rows for anything operationally distinctive.

Section 2 should mirror your actual program. If you carry an extra line, add it. If you're a technology or professional services firm, expand the professional liability row into sub-rows by service type. If you hold a Cyber Endorsement rather than a Stand-Alone Cyber Policy, note that in the form column, since sublimits often differ.

Section 3 should grow every year. Add a question each time a claim, near-miss, or industry loss teaches you something. Retail and hospitality teams should add premises and slip-and-fall frequency questions. Companies with distribution fleets should add driver hiring and telematics questions, since auto severity is a pressure point for fleet operators.

Section 4 is more important than most teams expect. In states with heavy attorney representation, such as Florida and Texas, claims tend to show both higher frequency and higher severity, because counsel influences claim values and outcomes. If your footprint is concentrated there, discuss limits adequacy with your broker rather than assuming national benchmarks apply.

Section 5 is where you convert the carrier relationship into capacity. Without a risk manager, risk engineers act as trusted advisers. Be specific about pain points from your prior carrier so the service plan addresses them.

Technology note. Carriers are moving submission processing onto single platforms and adding AI to digest large volumes of information. For you, the practical implication is that clean, complete, structured submission data speeds quoting and reduces back-and-forth. Keep your inventory in Section 1 current and consistent, and reuse it every renewal.

Validation Steps

A template that's filled in but never tested gives false comfort. Check it three ways.

1. Scenario test. Pick three plausible losses: a service error claim, a pollutant release, a multi-week outage. Trace each through your policies on paper. Name the policy, the limit, and the retention that responds. Anything you can't trace is a gap.
2. Broker confirmation. Send your completed Section 2 and 3 to your broker and ask for written confirmation or correction. Request answers by form and endorsement name, not general assurances.
3. Carrier walkthrough. Ask your carrier's risk engineer to review Sections 1 and 5. Confirm a visit schedule and that new facilities trigger a review.

Then schedule the review 90 to 120 days before each renewal, and rerun it after any acquisition, new facility, or expansion into a new country. The first pass takes effort. Later passes mostly take updates, and each one shrinks the chance that a claim becomes your first discovery of what isn't covered.