Playbook, insurance broker
Quote requests at a broker, and the underwriting that stands in the way
In most trades a quote is a calculation the business could do if it had the details. Here it is a decision somebody else makes. A premium comes out of underwriting: the trade, the claims history, the sums insured, the location, the answers on the proposal, and the appetite of whichever insurer is looking at it that week. A broker cannot produce it in a chat window and neither can an assistant, so the useful move is to make the submission that produces it happen faster.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for quotes and estimates holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The price is set by a third party rather than by the business answering, which means even a fully informed broker could not give a figure in the chat.
- The information needed to quote is prescribed per class of business, so the assistant's real job is to publish that list and shorten a two day exchange of emails into one submission.
- Any figure said here will be read as a quote and remembered as one, and the gap between an indication and a quote is a regulated distinction in most markets rather than a matter of tone.
- The answers that produce a premium carry a duty of disclosure, which a chat message does not, so the assistant must never look like the start of a proposal form.
How it arrives
- how much is public liability for a small building firm
- can you give me a rough idea of the premium
- what information do you need to quote
- how quickly can you come back with a price
- do you charge a broker fee on top of the premium
- i need cover starting tomorrow is that possible
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What you need in order to quote, per class of business | Turnover, trade description, number of employees, claims history, sums insured, locations, and anything class specific. Publishing this is the highest value thing on this page, because a submission that arrives complete is quoted in a fraction of the time. |
|---|---|
| Your fees and how you are remunerated | Whether you charge a broker fee, on what and when, whether it is refundable, and how you are paid by insurers. Disclosure obligations in most markets require this to be clear, and having the assistant quote it removes an awkward moment from your team's day. |
| How long a quote takes, and what makes it slower | Your typical turnaround per class, what needs to be referred, and which trades or risks take longer. Somebody asking for a price is usually asking about time as much as money, and this is the half you can answer. |
| What can and cannot be arranged at short notice | Whether cover can incept the same day, what you need in hand for that, and which classes cannot be rushed. The urgent enquiry is a real segment of a broker's traffic and it converts when it is answered quickly. |
The reply
We cannot put a number on it here, because a premium comes out of underwriting rather than a price list, and it depends on your trade, your turnover, your claims history and the sums insured. What we can do is quote quickly once we have those. The information we need for liability cover is listed on the quote page, and if you leave your name and email with the class of cover you are after, a broker will come back to you with what is missing.
It names the actual mechanism in the first sentence, so the refusal reads as how the market works rather than as an unwillingness to help. Listing what underwriting depends on doubles as the prompt for what the customer should have ready. Asking only for a name, an email and the class keeps the exchange short and keeps it clear that this is not the proposal.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor starts supplying risk information (turnover, claims, sums insured, trade detail) or asks for a figure for their own business.
I cannot price a risk, and I do not want to take your details here as though this were a proposal. Leave your name, your email and the class of cover you need and a broker will pick it up and tell you what else they need.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never give a premium, a range or a starting from figure for a risk that has not been underwritten.
- Never say that a customer's trade or risk is straightforward, or cheap to place.
- Never guarantee that cover can be arranged by a particular date.
- Never treat what somebody types in the chat as a disclosure that has been made.
Questions
- Can we publish indicative premiums at all?
- You can publish what you are permitted to publish and the assistant will quote it as you wrote it, including the qualifications alongside it. What it must not do is narrow that indication towards the person asking, because at that point it has produced a quote from a risk nobody underwrote.
- Is it a proposal form if it collects details?
- It should never be presented as one. It collects a name, an email and a message when somebody asks for a person, and that arrives with your team as an enquiry. The answers on a proposal carry duties that a chat message does not, and blurring the two is the risk worth designing out.
- What is the most useful thing to index here?
- The list of what you need in order to quote, per class. It is entirely factual, it never goes stale in the way rates do, and it turns the slowest part of a broker's week into one message.
Keep reading
- Everything for a insurance brokerProduct information is safe ground. A personal recommendation is regulated, and no assistant may confirm whether a loss is covered.
- Handling quotes and estimates in generalWhat has to be known before a number is possible, how the scoping step works, and how to answer without stonewalling or inventing a figure.
- 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.
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.