What is an SOV in commercial property insurance?

An SOV, or Statement of Values, is the schedule of insured locations and their values behind a commercial property placement. It is the file underwriting prices from and catastrophe models run on. Every decision downstream of it is a data decision first.

What a Statement of Values contains

An SOV is usually an Excel workbook with one row per location. A complete row carries the fields that pricing and modeling depend on:

• Address, precise enough to geocode to the building, not just a ZIP code.
• Building value, contents value, and business interruption value, which together form the total insured value (TIV).
• Construction type and occupancy, coded to a scheme the model understands.
• Year built, number of stories, and floor area.
• Secondary characteristics where available: roof type, sprinkler status, flood zone, and similar modifiers that refine catastrophe model output.

The same document is sometimes called a Schedule of Values. In commercial property submissions the two names describe the same thing.

Why the SOV matters

The SOV is the raw material of two consequential calculations. Underwriters price the account from its values and attributes. Catastrophe models simulate hurricanes, earthquakes, and severe storms against its locations to estimate expected loss. Neither process checks the schedule. Both trust it.

That trust is where portfolios quietly go wrong. Understated values reduce the premium collected, not the risk carried. A location geocoded to a ZIP centroid can move a building off a flood plain it actually sits on. An occupancy coded as unknown defaults to model assumptions nobody chose. The model does its job perfectly, on values nobody verified.

Where SOV data goes wrong

• Inconsistent headers and units across brokers, TPAs, and years.
• Missing fields, especially construction, year built, and floor area.
• Conflicting values between summary tabs and location tabs.
• Duplicate locations inflating or masking concentrations.
• Imprecise geocoding that lands buildings in the wrong hazard zone.
• Format conversions that strip Excel context, formulas, and notes on the way into other systems.

Each of these is invisible in a totals row and decisive in a loss year.

Completing an SOV well

The teams that do this well treat the SOV as evidence, not paperwork. Every value keeps its source. Every mapping from a broker's column to a model field stays visible and correctable. Ambiguity is surfaced for a human decision instead of silently defaulted. Validation runs before the schedule reaches a model, not after a claim exposes it.