Salvage

This may refer to –
(a) property that is rescued from danger on land or at sea; or
(b) an award that is paid to someone for voluntarily rescuing property at sea from a marine peril.

Salvage value

The estimated cash amount that would be received if damaged property were to be sold.

Several liability

Each member underwrites for his own account and is liable accordingly for his share of all claims and expenses that are incurred by the syndicates in which he participates.

Services business

See freedom of services.

Short-rate cancellation

When insurance contract is terminated prior to its expiry date by the insured any return premium that is payable will usually be calculated on a time on risk basis. The result is that the insured will receive less return premium than would be the case if the return premium was calculated on a pro rata basis (see pro rata cancellation).

Short-tail (risk)

A type of insurance where claims are usually made during the term of the policy or shortly after the policy has expired. Property insurance is an example of short tail business. The opposite of short tail business is long tail business.

Signed line

This refers to the amount of a given risk that an underwriter has agreed to accept. It may be the same as the underwriter’s written line or, if there is signing down, a lower amount.
The amount of a syndicate’s signed line should be shown in a table in the policy, where one is issued.

Signing Down

Where a risk is oversubscribed, which is to say that the underwriters’ written lines exceed 100% then, absent some contrary instruction, those lines will be proportionally reduced (“signed down”) by the broker until they total 100%. An underwriter may insist on preserving his written line in which event the written lines of the other underwriters will be proportionally reduced until they total 100% when added to the preserved written line of the other underwriter.

Signing slip

See slip.

Slip

There are two types of underwriting slip: a placing slip and a signing slip.
A placing slip is document created by a broker that contains a summary of the terms of a proposed insurance or reinsurance contract which is then presented by the broker to selected underwriters for their consideration. Underwriters may delete, amend or add terms on a slip as they consider appropriate for the purpose of providing an indication or a quotation.
A signing slip is a document that is created by a Lloyd’s broker after a quotation has been accepted for the purpose of processing premiums under the contract that is evidenced by the placing slip. It is a cleaned up version of the final placing slip and shows underwriters’ stamps, signed lines and underwriting references, these details being inserted by each underwriter at the request of the broker.
Provided that it shows the underwriters’ stamps, signed lines and underwriting references a placing slip may be used as a signing slip.