What Is a Schedule of Values in Insurance? SOV Fields, an Example and Why Accuracy Matters

On this page (9)

1. TL;DR
2. Statement of values example
3. What goes on a statement of values?
4. Is there a standard statement of values form?
5. Why does SOV accuracy matter?
6. How an SOV moves from the insured to the model
7. How do underwriters ingest SOVs?
8. Tips for a cleaner SOV
9. FAQs

TL;DR

• A schedule of values (SOV), also called a statement of values, is the list of every location and building a commercial property policy covers, with each one's address, construction, occupancy, protection and insured values.
• The values columns usually split into building, contents (business personal property) and business income. Added together they make the total insured value (TIV), which IRMI defines as the full value of covered property plus business income values and other covered property interests.
• Underwriters rate from it and catastrophe models run on it. A 2020 Willis Towers Watson data-quality project for the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association cut TWIA's modeled 1-in-100-year PML by $225 million by correcting exposure data.
• Values that are too low can trigger a coinsurance penalty at claim time, and on blanket policies a margin clause can cap a location's recovery at a percentage of the value shown on the latest SOV.
• SOVs usually arrive as spreadsheets in the broker's or insured's own layout. Extraction tools such as Indico Data, SortSpoke and Roots read them into structured exposure data.

A schedule of values in insurance, usually shortened to SOV and also called a statement of values, is the list of every location and building a commercial property policy covers. Each row describes one building: where it is, how it’s built, what it’s used for, how it’s protected, and what it would cost to replace the building, its contents and the income the business would lose if it burned. Underwriters price the account from it, catastrophe modelers run it through their models, and the values on it shape what the policy pays after a loss. (Construction contracts use the same phrase for a breakdown of the contract price used in progress billing. That document is unrelated and isn’t covered here.)

Statement of values example

The table below is a made-up SOV for an imaginary company with three locations, using round numbers. Real SOVs often run to dozens of columns and hundreds or thousands of rows, but the core is the same.

Loc / Bldg	City	Occupancy	Construction (ISO class)	Year built	Stories	Sq ft	Sprinklered	PPC	Building	Contents	Business income	TIV
1 / 1	Houston, TX	Warehouse and distribution	Joisted masonry (2)	1987	1	60,000	Yes	3	$6,000,000	$2,500,000	$1,200,000	$9,700,000
2 / 1	Atlanta, GA	Office	Fire resistive (6)	2009	5	48,000	Yes	2	$11,500,000	$1,800,000	$2,400,000	$15,700,000
3 / 1	Tampa, FL	Retail store	Frame (1)	1972	1	9,000	No	6	$1,350,000	$400,000	$250,000	$2,000,000
Total									$18,850,000	$4,700,000	$3,850,000	$27,400,000

Example figures only; they don’t describe any real company or property.

Read across a row and you have one building’s risk profile. Add up the value columns and you have the account’s total insured value (TIV).

What goes on a statement of values?

The fields fall into two groups: the COPE details (construction, occupancy, protection, exposure) that describe the risk, and the values that describe how much is at stake.

Field	What it records	Why the underwriter wants it
Location and building number, full address	One row per building, with street, city, state and ZIP	Address drives geocoding, territory, flood and wind zones and the catastrophe model’s hazard lookup
Construction	The building’s construction class	Fire rating depends on it; ISO’s six classes run from frame to fire resistive
Occupancy	What the building is used for	Fire load and loss history differ by use; ISO codes occupancy with four-digit Commercial Statistical Plan class codes
Year built, stories, square footage	The building’s age and size	Code era, height and area feed both rating and catastrophe models
Protection	Sprinklers, alarms, and the public protection class (PPC)	Shows how well a fire is likely to be contained; ISO grades public fire protection from 1 (best) to 10
Exposure	Hazards from the surroundings: distance to coast, neighbouring occupancies, brush	Separates two identical buildings in different places
Building value	Cost to rebuild the structure	The limit for the building, and the base for coinsurance
Contents (BPP)	Business personal property: equipment, stock, furniture, improvements	ISO’s SOV form also separates stock and personal property of others
Business income	Income lost while the location can’t operate	A time element value; California’s guide lists business interruption among the most common time element coverages
Valuation basis	Replacement cost or actual cash value per item	Sets how losses are settled

The construction classes come from ISO’s Commercial Lines Manual. Verisk’s own report definitions list them from least to most fire resistive:

1. Frame: exterior walls of wood, brick veneer, stone veneer, wood ironclad or stucco on wood.
2. Joisted masonry: masonry exterior walls with a combustible floor and roof.
3. Noncombustible: exterior walls, floor and supports of metal, gypsum or other noncombustible materials.
4. Masonry noncombustible: as joisted masonry, but with floors and roof of metal or other noncombustible materials.
5. Modified fire resistive: walls, floors and roof rated for at least 1 hour but less than 2 hours.
6. Fire resistive: walls, floors and roof rated for at least 2 hours.

For protection, ISO assigns each fire district a Public Protection Classification from 1 to 10. Class 1 is the best public fire protection, and Class 10 means the area’s fire suppression doesn’t meet ISO’s minimum criteria. Verisk says it collects this information for more than 45,000 fire districts.

On valuation, Texas’s commercial property guide explains the difference: replacement cost pays to repair or replace at current costs, while actual cash value pays replacement cost minus depreciation. Some SOV forms ask for the basis on each line. Citizens’ form, for example, applies replacement cost to buildings other than mobile homes and actual cash value to business personal property.

Is there a standard statement of values form?

There is an ISO form, and some carriers publish their own. ISO’s Statement of Values, CP 16 15 (the 07 88 edition is the one publicly posted) was built for requesting a blanket average rate. It lists each item by description, location and occupancy, with a coverage code (B for building, S for stock, YBPP for your business personal property, PPO for personal property of others) and its value. The form’s notes say:

• The form or its equivalent must be filed annually, and a blanket average rate expires one year from its effective date.
• Minimum coinsurance for a blanket average rate is 90%.
• Separate blanket rates, such as buildings only or personal property only, need a separate statement of values for each.
• The insurer may require the insured, or a partner or officer of a firm, to sign it.

Residual market carriers can have their own. Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance uses an Agreed Value - Statement of Values form (CIT 16 15 12 15). Its rules: agreed values must equal 100% of the appraised or inspected values, the agreed value becomes the limit of insurance on the declarations, and the form must be completed annually and submitted before the policy expires or the policy will be non-renewed or cancelled. Those are Citizens’ rules for its Florida policies, and other carriers set their own.

Outside those forms, SOVs commonly travel as spreadsheets built by the broker or the insured’s risk manager, in that office’s own column layout. Extraction vendors describe reading them in any format for that reason.

Why does SOV accuracy matter?

Pricing and the blanket limit

The values on the SOV are the exposure base: ISO’s form works out premium item by item from a rate and the value filed for that item. On a blanket policy, one limit covers several locations, and the SOV is the record of what each location contributed to it. ISO’s form ties the blanket average rate to the values filed on it.

Coinsurance penalties

Most commercial property policies carry a coinsurance clause. The NAIC glossary describes it as a clause meant to make policyholders carry a reasonable amount of insurance, usually at least 80% of value, and says an insured who falls short shares a larger part of the loss. The California Department of Insurance puts it in terms of the claim: a building that isn’t insured to value can bring a monetary penalty at the time of a loss. If the building value on the SOV is stale, the limit built from it may fall short of the requirement.

Two policy features change this. Agreed value suspends the penalty: California’s guide says agreed value waives any coinsurance penalty and pays 100% of the agreed amount for a covered loss, which is why Citizens, for one, ties its agreed value option to a signed statement of values that matches appraised values. A margin clause works the other way on blanket policies. ISO’s CP 12 32 endorsement (Limitation on Loss Settlement, Blanket Insurance) caps what the policy pays at a location at a percentage of the value shown for it in the latest statement of values reported to the insurer. Big I’s Virtual University lists the percentages ISO provides rating factors for as 105%, 110%, 120% and 130%, and notes that carriers’ own forms may differ. With a margin clause, an understated location is underinsured even when the blanket limit is large.

Catastrophe modeling

Catastrophe models read each SOV row: the address places the building in the hazard, and construction, occupancy, year built and stories set how much damage the model expects. Missing fields fall back to defaults. A Willis Towers Watson presentation to the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association in December 2020 put it this way: if you don’t tell the model about a risk, it makes assumptions based on industry data. WTW’s data-quality project for TWIA found:

• More than 10,000 risks recorded as single-family homes were condominium or apartment risks.
• About 23% of commercial risks moved out of the catch-all General Commercial occupancy into specific ones.
• 50,595 locations with hurricane-rated roof coverings had been modeled as “unknown.”

The deck reports that the project reduced TWIA’s 1-in-100-year probable maximum loss by $225 million and its reinsurance expense by $9.2 million against the original recommendation.

Better data doesn’t always lower the number. In a July 2026 analysis, Moody’s applied enriched building characteristics to more than a million US residential properties: average annual loss rose about 6% in its hurricane study and fell about 5% in its severe convective storm study, and individual properties moved by more than 15% in both directions. Moody’s also warns about coding: recording an unobserved feature as “not present” instead of “unknown” hands the model a favorable input in place of its neutral default, which can understate losses across a book.

How an SOV moves from the insured to the model

1. 1
   InsuredValues updated

   The insured's risk manager or finance team updates building, contents and business income values, sometimes from appraisals.

2. 2
   BrokerSOV sent with the submission

   The broker packages the SOV with the application and loss runs and sends it to markets.

3. 3
   Underwriting opsExtracted and mapped

   The carrier or MGA reads the spreadsheet, maps its columns to a standard schema and converts construction and occupancy text to codes.

4. 4
   UnderwritingChecked and enriched

   Addresses are geocoded; missing or doubtful attributes are checked against property data.

5. 5
   CarrierRated and modeled

   The underwriter prices the account and the exposure team runs it through catastrophe models.

A typical flow for a commercial property submission. Steps 3 and 4 are where SOV software and property data providers sit.

How do underwriters ingest SOVs?

Someone has to turn the broker’s spreadsheet into the carrier’s schema. Because each broker builds its own layout, the same field can appear as “Const,” “Construction Type” or “ISO Class,” with values written as “JM,” “joisted masonry” or “brick w/ wood roof.” Locations may sit on several tabs, and values arrive as text with currency symbols. Someone has to normalize all of it before the rater or the model can use it, and the second problem is coding: the model needs its own construction and occupancy codes, not the broker’s words.

Several submission-intake vendors list SOVs as a document they handle. According to their own pages:

• Indico Data says it ingests emails, documents, spreadsheets, loss runs and SOVs at submission intake, and quotes Convex as saying it cut time spent on SOVs by over 90%. That is a vendor-published customer statement.
• SortSpoke says it captures data from emails, applications, SOVs and loss runs, with underwriters kept in control of the output.
• Roots, now Bevaya, says it reads Statement of Values spreadsheets and property schedules in any format and normalizes the data.

The full comparison is in our guide to SOV extraction software. Extraction solves the first problem; the coding and checking step still needs a defined schema and someone reviewing the values the tool couldn’t map. To check or fill in building attributes, carriers also buy property data: Verisk, for example, sells reports that model construction class, year built, stories, square footage and building use, and other property data providers sell roof, imagery and hazard data.

SOVs usually arrive alongside other documents that need the same treatment: loss run reports and ACORD applications, which the wider insurance document extraction software category covers. MGAs that bind property business also report exposures back to carriers in bordereaux, which carry many of the same location fields.

Tips for a cleaner SOV

• One row per building, with a location and building number that stays the same from year to year, so renewals can be compared line by line.
• Full street addresses, not “same as above” or a campus name.
• Construction in ISO terms, or both the ISO class and a description.
• Unknown means unknown. Leave a field blank or mark it unknown instead of guessing; Moody’s warns that a wrong “not present” does more harm than a blank.
• Date the valuation, and say whether each value is replacement cost or actual cash value.
• Refresh values each renewal, especially building values after construction cost increases. California’s guide points to the inflation guard endorsement as one way to keep limits current between appraisals.

FAQs

Is a schedule of values the same as a statement of values?

Yes. In property insurance the two names, and the abbreviation SOV, refer to the same document: a list of insured locations with their characteristics and values. ISO's form is titled Statement of Values, and Citizens Property Insurance in Florida uses an Agreed Value - Statement of Values form. Construction contracts also use a schedule of values, but that is a breakdown of the contract price for billing and has nothing to do with insurance.

What does COPE stand for on a statement of values?

COPE stands for construction, occupancy, protection and exposure. Construction is the building's class (ISO uses six, from frame to fire resistive), occupancy is what the building is used for, protection covers sprinklers, alarms and the public fire protection class, and exposure covers hazards from the surroundings, such as distance to the coast or neighbouring buildings.

What is total insured value (TIV)?

TIV is the sum of the values insured at a location or across a schedule. IRMI defines total insurable value as the full value of the insured's covered property, business income values and any other covered property interests. On a typical SOV that means building plus contents plus business income.

How often should a statement of values be updated?

At least once a year, at renewal. ISO's statement of values form says it must be filed annually, and Citizens requires its Agreed Value statement every year before the policy expires, or the policy will be non-renewed or cancelled. Update it mid-term too if you buy, sell or substantially renovate a location.

What happens if the values on my SOV are too low?

If the policy has a coinsurance clause and the limit is below the required percentage of the property's value at the time of loss, the insurer pays only a proportion of the loss. On blanket policies with a margin clause, recovery at a location can be capped at a percentage of the value reported for it. Low values also understate the exposure the underwriter and the catastrophe model see.

Who fills out the schedule of values?

The insured supplies the property information and values, usually with help from its broker or agent, and the broker sends the SOV to underwriters with the submission. ISO's form lets the insurer require the insured, or a partner or officer of a firm, to sign it, and Citizens requires the insured's signature, with both the president and a board member signing for condo associations.

Can software read a statement of values automatically?

Yes. Document extraction tools built for insurance submissions read SOV spreadsheets and PDFs and map their columns to a standard schema. Indico Data, SortSpoke and Roots all list SOVs among the documents they handle. Extraction gets the values out; a separate mapping step converts free-text construction and occupancy into the codes your rating and catastrophe models expect.