By business type
What an insurance broker can safely let an assistant say
Broking has a line drawn through it that most trades do not have. The difference between giving information and making a personal recommendation is a regulated distinction in most markets, and it decides which rules apply to whatever was said. An assistant can be genuinely useful on the information side. On the recommendation side, and on anything to do with a claim, it has to get out of the way immediately.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- do you do public liability for tradesmen
- how much is professional indemnity cover
- am i covered for accidental damage
- how do i make a claim
- can i add a driver to my policy
- how quickly can i get a certificate
- do you charge a broker fee
- can i cancel within the cooling off period
- what is the excess on this policy
- do you cover businesses like mine
- i need cover starting tomorrow is that possible
- who is my policy actually with
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| Product descriptions by class of business | What each type of cover is for and the sorts of risk it is bought against, written in the words a customer uses. Buyers arrive knowing they need something and not what it is called, so matching a trade to a product class is the most useful thing the assistant does here. |
|---|---|
| The claims route, in full and near the top of everything | The claims line, the hours it is staffed, the out of hours arrangement, what to have ready, and the time limits for notification. A claim is the one moment a broker is judged on, and the only acceptable outcome from a widget is that the customer is holding the right number within one reply. |
| Your fees and how you are remunerated | Whether you charge a broker fee, on what, whether it is refundable, and how you are paid by insurers. Disclosure obligations in most markets require this to be clear, and putting it where the assistant can quote it removes an awkward conversation from your team's day. |
| Mid term change and cancellation terms | Cooling off rights, cancellation charges, how a refund is calculated, and what happens to a policy adjusted part way through a term. These are process questions with fixed answers, and they consume a real share of a broker's phone time. |
| What documents you issue and what each one is | The difference between a summary document, the full policy wording, a schedule and a certificate. Customers ask for the wrong one constantly, and an assistant that can explain which document proves what saves a round trip. |
| What you need in order to quote | The information required for each class of business, such as turnover, trade description, claims history and sums insured. Publishing this turns a two day exchange of emails into one submission. |
What has to reach a person
Whether anything is covered
This is the hardest rule in this entry and the one with the least room in it. Whether a loss is covered depends on the wording, the schedule, the endorsements, the excess, the conditions and whether they were complied with. No assistant reading marketing pages can answer it, and a wrong yes creates an expectation the broker will be asked to honour.
It applies even where the customer quotes a policy section back at it. The correct reply is that cover is confirmed against their own documents by a person, and then a route to that person straight away.
Any claim, notified or contemplated
Claims carry notification conditions, and delay can prejudice a claim entirely. There is nothing useful an assistant can do here except deliver the claims number and the information the customer should have ready.
Put the claims line in the refusal message itself rather than trusting the assistant to compose it, so a customer who has just had an incident sees it in the first reply.
Anything that amounts to a recommendation
Which policy somebody should buy, whether a limit is enough, whether they can drop a section, whether their current cover is adequate. In most regulated markets that is advice, and giving it triggers suitability duties, record keeping obligations and liability that follow the firm rather than the widget.
The assistant can describe products. Choosing between them for a named person belongs to a broker.
A price for a risk that has not been underwritten
Premiums come out of underwriting: the trade, the claims history, the sums insured, the location, the answers on the proposal. A published indication is fine as material. Turning it into a figure for the person asking will be treated as a quote and remembered as one.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
I cannot tell you whether something is covered or recommend a policy, because that depends on your own documents and your circumstances. If you need to make a claim, please use the claims line above straight away. I can explain the types of cover we arrange, our fees, and what we need in order to quote.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Information and advice are regulated differently
Most markets that regulate insurance distribution draw a line between providing information on a non advised basis and making a personal recommendation, with different disclosure and suitability obligations either side. An assistant does not know which side it is on, so it has to be kept firmly on the information side by the material it is given.
In practice that means indexing product descriptions and process pages, and not indexing anything that reads as a recommendation for a customer type.
Financial promotion rules apply to what it says
Rules on financial promotions in most markets require communications to be clear, fair and not misleading, and they apply to the firm's own channels. An assistant answering in the firm's name is a firm communication, and a summary that quietly drops an exclusion is exactly the thing those rules exist to catch.
Non disclosure is the customer's biggest risk, and yours
A policy can be avoided or a claim reduced where material facts were not disclosed. An assistant that reassures somebody a detail is probably not relevant could contribute directly to an uninsured loss, which is why questions of the form should I mention this must go to a person every time.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- Whether a particular loss, item or situation is covered.
- Which policy or limit somebody should choose.
- Whether an existing policy is adequate, or safe to reduce.
- A premium for a risk that has not been underwritten.
- Whether a detail needs to be disclosed on a proposal.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a insurance broker rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- Coverage questions, and the only safe shape for the answerThe one question a broker's assistant can never answer, and the reply that still leaves the customer better off than silence would.
- Quote requests at a broker, and the underwriting that stands in the wayPremiums come out of underwriting, not out of a price list. What the assistant collects instead, and how it keeps an indication from becoming a quote.
- Cancellation questions a broker can answer without opening a policyCooling off rights, mid term cancellation, how a refund is worked out and why the assistant cannot calculate one for a named policy.
- Payment questions at a broker, and the one with cover attached to itHow instalment arrangements work, what a broker fee covers and why a missed payment is not just a billing problem but a cover problem.
- The handover that starts with a phone number, not a formA claim or an incident is the one handover that cannot wait for an email. Why the claims line belongs inside the refusal message itself.
- Two different prices, and the assistant may quote only oneA premium is the insurer's number. The fee schedule is the broker's own, it is publishable, and disclosing it is not optional.
- Two complaint routes, and the assistant does not pick between themService by the broker and a decision by the insurer are two complaints with two routes. The assistant must not choose between them.
- Getting a meeting with a broker, and whether the caller needs oneA review is scheduled backwards from a renewal date, and half the people asking for a meeting only need a document today.
- A deletion request, and the three records it lands onMarketing contact, client record and claims file are deleted on different terms, and the insurer holds a copy the broker cannot touch.
- Three separate sums, and why the refund looks wrongA return premium, a broker fee and a credit agreement settle separately, which is why the amount never matches what was expected.
- The clock that starts when a premium instalment failsA missed premium instalment runs a clock that ends in cover being cancelled, and reinstating it afterwards is an underwriting decision.
- Getting into the portal, and who is entitled to be in itAccess to a broker's document portal is an authority question first, especially when the named contact on a commercial policy has left.
- Why the reset link goes to an address nobody readsA portal used annually collects stale addresses, so the reset link arrives somewhere the customer can no longer read.
- The assurance form, and the certificate that arrives with itThe form and the request for the broker's own cover arrive together and are different documents. Neither is answered in chat.
- A loss, a chat window, and the first hourA customer reporting theft or damage needs the claims route in one reply, plus what not to do in the first hour. Nothing about cover.
- Three sets of hours, and only one of them is the broker'sThe office opens at nine, but nothing goes on risk until an insurer is open, and the claims line keeps hours the broker does not set.
- What can be adjusted, and the request that is something elseA wording in large print is an adjustment. Letting a relative deal with the policy is a change of authority, and not the same request.
- Coming to a broker for the first timeThe first conversation is a fact find with a duty attached. What to have ready, what the broker must tell you, and who it searches.
Questions
- Our whole site is about cover. Will it end up answering coverage questions?
- Only if you index the wordings. Keep the material to what each product is for, what you need in order to quote, and how the process works, and there is no clause text for it to reason from. Then raise the caution level so a coverage question falls below the match threshold and returns your refusal instead of the nearest page.
- What is the single most valuable thing to get right?
- The claims route appearing immediately, inside the refusal wording itself. Somebody who has just had a fire or a collision types before they read, so the reply that matters is the one on screen in two seconds.
- Can it take details for a quote?
- It can collect a name, an email and a message when somebody asks for a person, and that arrives with your team as an enquiry. It is not a proposal form and should not be presented as one, because the answers on a proposal carry duties that a chat message does not.
- Does it know which insurer a customer is with?
- No. It cannot look anybody up in any system unless you separately connect one, so it should explain how to find that on their schedule rather than appearing to know.
Keep reading
- For a law firmFee structures, consultation terms and onboarding checks are answerable. Anything applied to a caller's own facts is legal advice.
- For a accounting firmDeadlines drive the volume. What an accountancy practice can automate, and why no answer may touch a caller's own numbers.
- For a mortgage brokerProcess, documents and fees are safe to automate. Rates go stale fast and affordability cannot be answered generically.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.