New Quarterly Deep Dive: Items vs. Policies — How to Read SLTX Counts
SLTX has released its latest Quarterly Deep Dive, focusing on two measures in the surplus lines market: item count and policy count.
This report takes a detailed look at the item and policy counts published each month in SLTX’s Policy and Premium Report, and at what each one does and does not measure. While premium draws the most attention, it is shaped by both rate and activity; counts strip rate out and speak directly to how many risks were placed and how much filing activity SLTX processed. The report breaks down the anatomy of an item, explains how corrections move through the counts, and shows why the July and August 2026 figures looked so unusual.
Key insights include:
- Why counts belong alongside premium: policy count isolates how many risks were actually placed, independent of market dynamics
- The anatomy of an item: new and renewal policies and binders are only about two-thirds of all items, with the rest made up of post-placement activity such as endorsements, cancellations, and audits, plus procedural corrections
- How a “living database” interacts with a fixed monthly report: because reversals and re-entries are counted when filed, summing monthly policy counts double-counts corrected policies, even though premium nets out
- What drove July and August 2026: a single large block of new-policy filings reported in July and largely reversed in August inflated both months’ published counts, even though the premium netted out
As the Texas E&S market continues to grow in both premium and volume, understanding what counts measure, and knowing which count answers which question, is critical for accurate analysis and decision-making.
You can access the full report here: