Glossary

Fire resistive construction is one of six building construction categories established by Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO), in its Commercial Lines Manual (CLM) for purposes of developing rates for insuring commercial property, based on susceptibility to damage by fire.

A fire wall is designed to prevent the spread of fire from within one part of a building to another.

FIRMette is a section of a flood insurance rate map (FIRM) developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that can be created online by selecting the desired area from an image of a FIRM.

First-party insurance is insurance that applies to the insured's own property or person.

Used in the 1960s in certain global slip excess-of-loss reinsurance treaties written by underwriters participating in the Lloyd's of London marketplace, the clause provided as follows: [t]his Contract does not cover any claim or claims arising from a common cause, which are not first advised during the period of this Contract. It is part of a larger common cause coverage meant to allow the cedent to cumulate losses ("occurrences") and cede them to the excess-of-loss treaty when the individual losses all arise out of a larger common cause.

First bite is used in reference to auto financial responsibility laws that do not require motorists to furnish evidence of financial responsibility until after a serious traffic violation or an accident involving bodily injury (BI) or property damage (PD) over a certain amount.

First class mail coverage is a policy providing all risks coverage for shipments of the insured and shipments between the insured's offices of negotiable and nonnegotiable securities and detached coupons by first class mail.

First dollar coverage is insurance coverage that provides for the payment of all losses up to the specified limit without the application of deductibles.

First dollar defense coverage is a feature of some liability policies in which retentions do not apply to defense costs, even if no indemnity payments are made in conjunction with a claim.

First dollar defense, umbrella, is an umbrella or professional liability policy provision under which the insurer agrees to indemnify the insured for costs of claims defense in the self-insured retention (SIR) area.