Texas is the second-largest P&C insurance market in the country. It is also one of the most rigorously regulated. For admitted carriers writing personal auto, residential property, or farm and ranch business in the state, that regulation includes a specific, mandatory, and frequently misunderstood statutory reporting obligation: TICO.
This guide is written for insurance professionals (underwriters, compliance officers, actuaries, and technology leaders) who need to understand exactly what TICO reporting demands, when it’s due, and how to build an operation that handles it cleanly, every period, without heroics.
What is TICO and Why Does it Exist?
The Texas Insurance Checking Office, Inc. (TICO) is a private nonprofit organization designated by the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) as the official statistical agent for three lines of business: Private Passenger Automobile, Residential Property, and Farm and Ranch insurance.[1] That designation has been in place, in various forms, since TICO’s founding in 1935.[1]
As statistical agent, TICO collects premium and loss data from every admitted carrier writing the covered lines in Texas.[1] The TDI uses that aggregated data for a clear and consequential purpose: setting reasonable rates, monitoring market conduct, calculating residual market assessments, and informing legislative and public policy analysis.[2][3][4] The data you file with TICO shapes the regulatory environment in which you compete.
This framing matters because it changes how carriers should think about TICO reporting. It is not an administrative tax on operating in Texas. It is structured data disclosure with real downstream consequences, and it deserves the same operational rigor as your statutory financial reporting.
Who is Required to File TICO?
The obligation is broad and threshold-free. If your company is admitted in Texas and writes direct insurance in any of the three covered lines, TICO reporting applies — regardless of premium volume, market share, or organizational structure.[1][2] The requirement covers:
- Stock Insurance Companies
- Mutual Insurance Companies
- Reciprical Exchanges (RRG)
- County Mutual Insureres, including those operating through MGA fronting arrangements
- Farm mutual insurers writing covered lines
- Lloyd’s Plans
County mutuals with MGA fronting arrangements carry an additional structural requirement: each MGA must be assigned a permanent, unique three-digit code used consistently across all Texas statistical plans.[7] This requirement exists because the statistical obligation follows the admitted paper, not the distribution relationship.
If your organization has recently entered the Texas market, expanded into a new covered line, or undergone a merger or acquisition, a compliance review of your TICO registration and statistical plan configurations is not optional.
What Data Must be Reported?
TICO reporting is highly structured. Each statistical plan defines the specific fields, coding conventions, and data hierarchies required for the line it governs. These are not general guidelines. These are precise specifications, and deviations generate rejections.
At a high level, the required data falls into three categories:
Premium and Exposure Data
- Written and earned premium by coverage and territory[2][3]
- Policy counts and exposure units (vehicle-years, house-years, and equivalents)[2][3]
- Loss adjustment expenses where required by the applicable plan[3]
Loss Data
- Paid losses, case reserves, and incurred loss totals[2][3]
- Claim counts by coverage[2][3]
- Loss adjustment expenses where required by the applicable plan[3]
Line-Specific Statistical Elements
Each plan imposes additional field-level requirements. The residential property plan requires reporting by policy form (HO-3, HO-B, dwelling fire, renters, etc.), by territory and ZIP code[2], and under the revised plan effective April 1, 2026, includes new monthly reports for noticed and actual cancellations, nonrenewals, and declinations.[6] The private passenger auto plan requires quarterly ZIP-code-level insured vehicle counts from top reporting group members.[3][7]
The April 2026 revision to the Texas Statistical Plan for Residential Risks introduces cancellation and nonrenewal notice reporting that did not previously exist. Carriers who have not reviewed the new plan and updated their data capture workflows are already behind.
This level of specificity (plan-defined codes, coverage-level granularity, ZIP-code reporting, form-type categorization) means that statistical coding cannot be treated as a downstream accounting task. It must be embedded in how policies are issued and how claims are categorized.
How Often Must TICO Reports be Filed?
Submission frequency varies by line and report type.[2][3][4] The table below represents the current TICO reporting schedule for admitted Texas carriers:
| Report | Line of Business | Frequency | Deadline |
| Monthly Premium Report | Residential Property | Monthly | 45 days post experience month |
| Paid & Outstanding Loss Report | Residential Property | Monthly | 45 days post experience month |
| Cancellation / Nonrenewal Notices | Residential Property | Monthly | 45 days post experience month |
| Quarterly Premium Report | Private Passenger Auto | Quarterly | 45 days post experience quarter |
| Quarterly Detailed Experience (TRG) | Private Passenger Auto | Quarterly | 45 days post experience quarter |
| Insured Vehicles by ZIP Code | Private Passenger Auto | Quarterly | 45 days post experience quarter |
| Monthly Farm & Ranch Premium Report | Farm and Ranch / F&R Owners | Monthly | 45 days post experience month |
| Monthly Farm & Ranch Loss Report | Farm and Ranch / F&R Owners | Monthly | 45 days post experience month |
The 45-day deadline following the close of each experience period is not a soft target.[2][3][4] Late filings, deficient submissions, and persistent data quality issues can trigger heightened TDI scrutiny. When data discrepancies surface between TICO filings and your Annual Statement, the exposure escalates quickly.
For carriers managing multi-state books, the TICO calendar sits alongside NCCI workers’ compensation reporting, ISO commercial lines reporting, and potentially state-specific bureau obligations in other jurisdictions. Managing these overlapping calendars manually is a structural liability.
Submitting Your Data: Electronic vs. Manual Coding
TICO accepts data through two channels, which can be used simultaneously depending on transaction type.
Electronic Reporting
Carriers can submit data electronically, but TICO requires a testing and validation process before accepting live electronic submissions from any company.[5] The testing phase validates that your data extract conforms to plan specifications: field formats, code values, layout, and submission structure. Carriers relying exclusively on manual coding should treat electronic reporting as a near-term infrastructure priority, not a future enhancement.
Manual Coding Service
TICO operates a statistical coding service in which TICO staff classify and code transactions on the carrier’s behalf, based on policy documents submitted by the carrier.[5] This is particularly useful for complex transaction types (i.e., endorsements with coverage changes, mid-term cancellations, nonstandard policy forms) that may not map cleanly to automated extract logic.[5]
TICO’s manual coding service is a legitimate compliance tool, but it should not be a permanent substitute for automated data infrastructure. As transaction volumes grow, manual coding introduces latency, inconsistency, and a dependency on workflows your team does not control.
Many carriers use a hybrid approach: electronic submissions for new and renewal business, manual coding requests for specific transaction types that require TICO interpretation.[5] The goal, over time, should be systematically reducing the share of transactions that require manual handling.
A Policy Administration System Built for Configurability
A modern P&C policy administration system should embed statistical code assignment directly into the product configuration layer. When a policy is issued in a given line, territory, and coverage combination, the correct TICO codes should be assigned automatically, not by a compliance analyst working from a spreadsheet after the fact.
This requires a PAS that supports granular product definition, territory and classification tables, and audit-ready transaction logs. It also requires genuine configurability: when TDI updates a statistical plan, carriers should be able to update their product and mapping configurations without a full development cycle.
Integrated Claims Data
TICO requires both sides of the equation: premium data and loss data, reconciled to the same policy record. A Policy Administration System that integrates directly with claims management, or has native claims administration built in, eliminates the most common source of reconciliation failures. This is often the gap between two separate systems that were never designed to produce a unified statistical output.
Business Intelligence as a Compliance Layer
Business Intelligence tools for Insurance are often positioned as growth and pricing instruments. For Texas carriers, they serve an equally important compliance function. When dashboards are connected directly to the policy and claims data layer, compliance teams can:
- Monitor accruing premium and loss figures by line and territory throughout the experience period instead of racing to beat the deadline
- Identify missing or inconsistent statistical codes in real time, before they become rejection flags
- Reconcile TICO submission totals against Annual Statement data on a rolling basis
- Track cancellation and nonrenewal volumes against thresholds that trigger enhanced TDI reporting[2][6]
- Generate pre-built TICO report templates directly from the core data layer
The transition from “we pull a report at the end of the quarter” to “we monitor this continuously” is not a luxury. In a regulatory environment where TICO data is cross-referenced against financial statements and market conduct trends, real-time visibility is a meaningful risk reduction.
6 Best Practices of P&C Insurance Companies Who Get TICO Right
- Embed Coding at Issuance: Statistical codes should be assigned when a policy is created, not as a downstream accounting exercise. When your product configuration layer drives the code, human error is structurally eliminated.
- Automate the Data Extract: Every manual step between your PAS and the TICO submission is a risk point. Carriers should generate a compliant extract from their core system on demand, not by hand.
- Build a Regulatory Calendar: Deadline management should live in the system, not in someone’s inbox. Monthly and quarterly TICO deadlines, plus TDI data calls, should generate automated alerts with meaningful lead time.
- Reconcile Before you Submit: Premium and loss totals in your TICO filing must reconcile with your Annual Statement. Catching discrepancies before submission is far less costly than addressing them after the fact.
- Pre-Validate Submissions: Flag missing statistical codes, formatting errors, and coverage-level outliers before the file leaves your building. TICO’s testing requirements for electronic submission are a useful internal QC framework.
- Montitor Plan Changes Actively: TICO statistical plans are living documents. The revised residential property plan effective April 2026 is a recent example. Carriers without a system that adapts quickly are re-coding manually every time a plan changes.
TICO as a Sign of Maturity
There is a useful diagnostic embedded in how a carrier handles TICO reporting: it reveals the quality of its data architecture. A carrier whose TICO submissions require minimal manual intervention, reconcile cleanly against its financials, and adapt to plan changes without incident has, by necessity, built something worth having: a policy administration and data infrastructure that is coherent, current, and controllable.
That infrastructure pays dividends well beyond the TICO obligation. The same data quality that makes statutory reporting clean also makes actuarial pricing analysis faster, rate filing support more credible, and management reporting more actionable.
The carriers who will compete most effectively in the Texas market over the next decade are those who have stopped treating statutory reporting as a cost center and started treating it as a data discipline. TICO compliance, done well, is a byproduct of operational excellence.
Texas is a market that rewards precision. Regulators who see clean, consistent, on-time TICO filings develop a different picture of a carrier than one whose submissions routinely require correction. That picture matters when rate filings are under review, when market conduct examinations are scoped, and when TDI is assessing the health of the admitted market.
Modern, configurable policy administration platforms, paired with integrated business intelligence, have made the infrastructure investment more accessible than ever. The carriers that make it will find that TICO compliance stops being something they manage and becomes something that simply happens, correctly, every period.
About WaterStreet
WaterStreet Company is a trusted technology and service partner to property and casualty insurers, MGAs, and insurtechs. WaterStreet’s configurable P&C platform is purpose-built for exactly this kind of statutory reporting precision. Because product rules, territory definitions, and coverage codes are configured, compliance teams can adapt to plan changes without waiting on IT development cycles. And with built-in Business Intelligence tools surfacing premium and loss data in real time, TICO reporting becomes a scheduled output of normal operations rather than a periodic scramble.
Reach out to WaterStreet Company today to request a consultation and demo.
References:
All factual claims in this document draw from publicly available TDI and TICO official sources. Citations are indicated inline as [1]–[8].
| Ref | Source | URL |
| [1] | Texas Insurance Checking Office (TICO) — About Us | https://www.ticostat.com/TICOAboutUs.action |
| [2] | TDI — Texas Statistical Plan for Residential Risks | https://www.tdi.texas.gov/company/data-collection/dcspres.html |
| [3] | TDI — Texas Private Passenger Auto Statistical Plan | https://www.tdi.texas.gov/company/data-collection/dcppasp.html |
| [4] | TDI — Texas Commercial Lines Statistical Plan (Farm & Ranch) | https://www.tdi.texas.gov/company/data-collection/dctclsp.html |
| [5] | TICO — Residential Statistical Reporting FAQ | https://www.ticostat.com/TICOResidentialFAQ.action |
| [6] | TDI — Texas Statistical Plan for Residential Risks (Revised, eff. April 1, 2026) | https://www.tdi.texas.gov/rules/2025/documents/2026resclean.pdf |
| [7] | TDI — Texas Private Passenger Auto Statistical Plan General Reporting Instructions | https://www.tdi.texas.gov/company/documents/ta_ppasp.pdf |
| [8] | TDI — Financial Requirements & Data Collection Overview | https://www.tdi.texas.gov/company/data-collection/index.html |
