Signal Engine

A contractor adopted Procore, OpenSpace, DroneDeploy, or Samsara. That contractor is now cheaper for Shepherd to write than for any legacy carrier, Shepherd Savings prices on the data, so the next placement for them is winnable on price, not just speed.

Sourced from

Trade press, vendor case studies and customer announcements.

Inclusion criteria

Named contractor, named platform on the Shepherd Savings partner list; contractor size worth a program (roughly $50M+ revenue).

What it activates

Aims rather than fires: raises that contractor's brokers in the queue and puts the savings angle in the draft. Alone it does not start a cadence, adoption says cheaper-to-win, not buying-now.

Confidence in the data

Medium. Announcements are real but lag deployment, and adoption depth varies. Priced-in credit only applies once the submission carries the data, which is exactly what the email asks the broker to start.

Construction casualty or property pricing is shifting in a way that changes broker behavior, hardening means brokers shop alternatives, softening means incumbents get aggressive and Shepherd's speed matters more than its price.

Sourced from

Trade press market reports, carrier earnings coverage, broker market bulletins.

Inclusion criteria

Construction or energy lines specifically; a direction a broker would act on, not commentary.

What it activates

Aims the message, in a hardening class the draft leads with capacity, in a softening one it leads with the 24-hour indication. Never fires a cadence alone, everyone reads the same market reports.

Confidence in the data

Medium. Directionally reliable, but broad, the same headline is true for every broker at once, which is exactly why it cannot be an act signal.

A merger, acquisition, or new office changes who controls placements. Books get re-evaluated in the first months after a deal closes, incumbency resets, and a market that shows up early gets considered.

Sourced from

Trade press deal coverage, brokerage announcements.

Inclusion criteria

A firm Shepherd is appointed with on either side of the deal; construction or energy books affected; close date within the last quarter.

What it activates

Aims: re-scores the affected brokers and flags them for the underwriter who owns the relationship. The human decides whether the moment is an opening or a distraction.

Confidence in the data

Medium. Deals are public, but whether a book actually moves is invisible from outside, treating this as act-tier would spray email into organizational chaos.

Brokers gather somewhere at a date. Useful for planning a conference presence or timing a touch, says nothing about any specific placement.

Sourced from

Trade press event coverage, conference sites, and the events the underwriters already plan to attend.

Inclusion criteria

Construction or energy insurance audience; dated; a Shepherd underwriter could plausibly attend or reference it.

What it activates

Context in the broker brief, a pre-meeting one-pager can cite the event both sides are attending. No cadence, no scoring effect.

Confidence in the data

High on the fact, low on the value, which is why it stays context.

A notable construction loss made the news. Brokers will be asked about it, but the account involved is mid-claim with a broker defending the relationship, there is no placement to win this week.

Sourced from

Trade press incident coverage, the same sweep that finds everything else, nothing extra is collected for this.

Inclusion criteria

Kept only as call context: significant, named, construction or energy. Deliberately excluded from outreach criteria entirely.

What it activates

None. Julian flagged loss and lawsuit news as unlikely to be actionable in Round 4, and the sharper version is that outreach into a fresh loss reads as ambulance-chasing and burns the relationship the play depends on. It appears in the broker brief when relevant and nowhere else.

Confidence in the data

High on the fact, and the fact is the reason not to act on it.