Property and casualty (P&C) insurance is the segment covering two related exposures: damage to or loss of property, and legal liability for harm caused to other people or their property. It is the segment most independent agencies operate in.
What sits inside P&C
Property: homeowners, commercial property, inland marine, business interruption.
Casualty: personal and commercial auto liability, general liability, workers' compensation, professional liability, umbrella and excess.
Most real policies bundle both. A homeowners policy covers the structure (property) and the owner's liability to a visitor injured on the premises (casualty). A business owners' policy does the same for a small business.
What P&C excludes
Life, health, disability, and long-term care are separate segments with different regulators, different distribution economics, and different licensing. An agency may sell both, but the operating models diverge sharply — P&C renews annually and services continuously; life is sold once and serviced rarely.
Why the annual renewal cycle defines the business
The economic fact that shapes every independent P&C agency is that policies renew every twelve months, and renewal is not automatic. Revenue is recurring but not guaranteed. Each year the entire book is, in principle, up for re-decision.
That single structural feature is why retention work compounds so heavily in P&C and why a few points of retention improvement outweigh most new-business gains. An agency that writes hard and retains poorly runs to stand still.