It’s Pig Iron Beneath Water!

This put up is a part of a sequence sponsored by Previous Republic Surety.

To a few of my fellow insurance coverage professionals, the surety enterprise has at all times had an air of secrecy about it. Maybe it’s the unique language we use referring to “Obligee’s” and “Principals”. Possibly it’s the surety underwriter’s means to shortly unlock the secrets and techniques of a shopper’s monetary assertion and translate a web page of numbers to feedback of reward or questions of concern.

It’s true that easy, clearer language can break down boundaries and make writing surety enterprise extra snug for some. Lately I’ve seen a motion in altering utility and bond type language to confer with the Obligee merely because the “Proprietor” and change the phrase principal with “Contractor”. We have to eschew obfuscation. I imply, keep away from overly sophisticated phrases.

One among my favourite idioms used within the surety enterprise got here straight from the insurance coverage trade. We’ll generally obtain a submission the place the agent has written clearly on the prime of the submission “PIUW“. This stands for Pig Iron Beneath Water. This previous part comes from the early days of fireplace insurance coverage. Pig Iron is an intermediate product of the iron trade, also referred to as crude iron. When Iron ingots are made (these are used to make Ductile Iron pipe, as an example) they break off molten items of the iron off the runner (generally known as the sow) into water to chill. The cooling ingots type right into a form that appears like a child pig, thus the identify pig iron. The purpose of the assertion is that Iron is taken into account comparatively inflammable (It melts at 1200 levels Celsius). Now put iron underneath water, and when it comes to a fireplace threat, you will have concerning the most secure threat there may be. So pig iron underneath water is a technique to signify a certain factor. A secure guess. It’s cash within the financial institution. It’s the absence of threat.

After all one particular person’s pig iron underneath water could be one other particular person’s oily rags within the nook on a scorching day. This is the reason now we have underwriters to make that willpower.

We consider surety needs to be accessible to everybody and we’re prepared that will help you translate the following alternative into enterprise fortune. So you probably have a development shopper that wants a efficiency and cost bond or you probably have business surety want or query, contact us and we are going to assist you to together with your surety wants.

This weblog was initially revealed on the Previous Republic Surety web site. It’s reproduced right here with permission.