How to handle certificates and mid-term adjustments without a queue

A brokerage clears its queue of certificates and mid-term adjustments by treating them as two different jobs. A request for a copy of a document that already exists needs a look-up and a send, so it should not have to wait for a handler. A change to a policy, the mid-term adjustment or MTA, needs a handler's decision, but most of the delay is in getting the full details from the client, and that part does not. An AI worker can answer the first kind and prepare the second. Agreeing the change, the premium and any question about cover stay with the account handler.

Why the queue forms

Both kinds of request arrive in the same mailbox and both land on whoever is in the middle of a renewal. A client needs their employers' liability certificate, which an employer in Great Britain must display where staff can see it and show to an inspector who asks. Another needs proof of cover for a tender closing on Friday. A third has bought a van. Each is small, and the easy ones wait behind the hard ones.

Sort first: copy or change?

The method rests on asking of every message whether the client wants something that is already on the record, or wants the record to be different. A copy of the current certificate, schedule or policy wording is the first kind. A new vehicle, driver, address, premises or sum insured is the second. So is a letter confirming cover to a third party or a certificate naming somebody new. Each looks like a copy, but it makes a new statement about the cover, and it belongs to a handler.

A copy document, step by step

1. Identify the client and the policy from the message, and check the request comes from the client's own contact on the record. A request from anybody else goes to a person.

2. Find the current document in the broking system: the one for this policy period, not last year's. Check the record shows the policy in force. If it is cancelled, lapsed or under notice of cancellation, the request goes to a handler.

3. Send it with a short covering line, and log the request against the client.

A mid-term adjustment, step by step

1. Get the whole change in one go. Keep a short set of questions for each kind of change. For a vehicle: registration, make and model, value, date wanted, who drives it, what it replaces. Adjustments stall when the first email has half of this.

2. Ask about the change in risk. The Insurance Act 2015 applies the duty of fair presentation to a variation of a non-consumer policy as it does to the policy itself, in respect of the change in risk. The questions are there to draw that out.

3. The handler puts the change to the insurer or keys it where the insurer has given the brokerage that facility, and gets the insurer's agreement and any extra or return premium.

4. The client is told what the change costs and what it does to the cover before they agree to it. The FCA's rules call for appropriate information in good time for the customer to make an informed decision, when a mid-term change is proposed as at the start.

5. Finish the paperwork. Invoice or credit note, revised schedule or certificate checked and sent, the record updated. For a fleet, the change also has to reach the Motor Insurance Database by the route the insurer sets.

Which steps an AI worker can take on

This work can go to an AI worker, with a written job, wording you have approved and a handler it answers to. It can read every message as it arrives and sort it into copy or change. For a copy, it can do all three steps in approved wording, which is the first-line client support role.

For a change, it can send the client the questions for that kind of change, in approved wording, remind them, and hand the handler a complete request laid out against the current schedule. After the handler has agreed the change with the insurer, it can prepare the invoice or credit note and the covering email as drafts, file the revised documents, and keep a list of fleet changes not yet confirmed on the database.

What stays with a handler

• "Am I covered?" Any question about whether cover is in force, from when, or for what, goes to a handler. The agent's acknowledgement says the request has been received and passed on. It never says a change is on cover. A copy asked for on a policy that is cancelled, lapsed or under notice goes to a handler too.

• The insurer's agreement and the premium. Putting a change to an insurer, accepting terms and anything that states a premium are the handler's, each time.

• Any new statement about cover. Letters to third parties, certificates naming a new party and anything else that did not exist before the request.

• Advice, such as whether the client now needs a different cover, and every phone call.

What to have ready before you start

The list of documents that count as copies, and who may ask for them. The question set for each common change. The acknowledgement wording, approved, which promises nothing about cover. And two counts from last month's mailbox: how many requests were copies, and how many days a change waited between the client's first email and the handler having the full details.

The wider argument is in how to scale an insurance brokerage without hiring more staff, and the insurance brokers page covers the rest of a handler's queue an agent can take on, from the renewal diary to unpaid premiums.

A brokerage would have an AI worker answer requests for copy documents and prepare each adjustment, leaving any question of cover, the insurer's agreement, the premium and any advice to the handler. How much of your handlers' week goes on certificates and adjustments instead of renewals? Talk to our agent.