How to scale an insurance brokerage without hiring more staff

An insurance brokerage can grow its book without another account handler when the renewal diary and the routine requests every policy brings go to an AI worker, and each handler can then look after more policies without renewals starting late or adjustments queueing. Every policy on the book comes round once a year and generates changes in between, and most of that work is asking, keying, checking and sending rather than advising. The AI worker can do the asking and the drafting from the broking system's records, in wording the firm has approved, and the handler keeps the advice, the terms and the client call.

What sets how many policies an account handler can carry?

A brokerage's workload rises and falls through the year. Every policy has a renewal date, so the book is really twelve monthly piles, and the handler's capacity is the number of renewals they can work properly in a month while everything else keeps arriving. A broker's own advert for an account handler lists the everything else: mid-term adjustments, invoices and credit notes, policy documents checked and forwarded, day-to-day client enquiries, liaison with claims. Each of those is per policy, so the number that forces the next hire is policies per account handler. The right figure depends on the book, since a book of fleets brings different work from a book of shops.

A renewal that starts in its final week has no time left to compare, question or look elsewhere, and the client notices. Done properly it starts weeks out. The client is asked for updated details on the risk, the holding insurer for the claims experience and the market for terms. A commercial client owes the insurer a fair presentation of the risk under the Insurance Act 2015, and what a consumer's renewal notice must show is set by the FCA's rules. Then come the statement of fact, the demands and needs statement, the invoice, the premium finance where the client wants it, and the documents to send.

Between renewals the adjustments arrive on no schedule: a vehicle to add, a certificate wanted today, a claim to notify, and client money to account for under the FCA's rules where the firm holds it. Most of this is typing and sending around a short decision, and it lands on whichever handler is in the middle of a renewal. By month the piles in the book are not equal, because the months when most of your commercial clients renew are the months the adjustments wait, and the months after are when next month's renewals start late.

Which of that work can an AI worker take on?

Set up for a brokerage, an AI worker would have a defined job, approved wording, limits, and a handler who approves anything that carries advice or a premium. Give it first the work that comes round for every policy.

• The renewal diary. Every policy's renewal date in one register, the request for updated details sent in approved wording at the lead time you set, the client reminded, and the answers set out for the handler against what the policy covers today. That is the renewals and expiry tracking role.

• The presentation and the quote. The presentation to insurers assembled from the client's answers and the file, each insurer's terms put into one comparison without rewording them, and your quote drafted in your template for the handler to check. The quote and proposal preparation role describes it.

• Copy documents and status. The certificate, schedule or wording a client asked for sent to their contact in approved wording; a claim's first notification prepared from the client's email for the claims handler to check and send.

• Premiums. Reminders for unpaid premiums drafted and every reply logged against the client record.

The insurance brokers page describes each of these roles. Their common effect is that a hundred more policies bring a hundred more renewals to check and advise on, without a hundred more to chase and key.

What stays with the handler?

The split is fixed with you before any role is built. Routine requests and reminders go in wording you approved in advance; anything about one client's cover or circumstances waits for a handler, each time.

• Advice and the recommendation. Whether a policy meets a client's demands and needs, and why, is written by authorised staff. The agent fills the factual part of the statement and nothing more.

• The renewal terms, the renewal notice and anything that carries a premium. The agent drafts and queues; a handler checks and sends.

• Claims. Whether a claim is covered, any negotiation with an insurer or loss adjuster, and the call with a client who has just had a loss.

• Cancelling cover for non-payment, and every phone call. The agent works in writing and tells the handler who to ring.

Start with the renewal diary

List the book by renewal month and mark, for the last three months, which renewals were invited at the lead time you intended and which were not. That tells you where the capacity went. Then approve the wording for each kind of message the agent will send, settle the lead time, and run the renewal diary for one month against a measure your broking system can produce: renewals started on time, and days from request to the client's answers. Add the presentation and the copy documents once the diary holds. Every message is logged with who approved its wording.

How to scale a business without hiring more staff makes the case for any firm; a brokerage's version is that the repeatable work comes round on a date. For how an AI worker is specified and reviewed, read what AI staff are. The homepage gives our starting price.

The renewal diary and the routine requests would go to an AI worker, in wording you have approved, and your account handlers would keep the advice. When did your last renewal start in its final week? Talk to our agent.