Checking a commercial submission before the underwriter sees it
An underwriter returns a submission for the same handful of reasons every time. Blank fields on the ACORD 125, a 140 that nobody signed or dated, loss runs valued outside the window that market accepts, or a FEIN that collides with a record already cleared to somebody else. Each of those is a field compared against a rule the carrier publishes, so the checking is mechanical. What decays is the rule set, because appetite and completeness requirements move per market and nothing announces when they moved.
A certificate request arrives as a sentence in an email, and answering it correctly requires deciding which endorsements the policy actually grants.
The agency management system is the record, and a standardised download feed keeps parts of it current. The feed is positional flat file in origin, its coverage varies by carrier and by line of business, and a policy that arrives without matching an existing record lands in a queue somebody clears by hand.
- Applied Epic
- Indio
- Outlook
When this is the wrong thing to build
Pick something else if your commercial business goes to two or three markets you have written for a decade, where an underwriter phones you rather than returning the file. A maintained rule set earns its keep across a wide market list, not a short and familiar one.
The constraint that shapes it
Producing a quote or binding coverage happens under a licence that is issued per state and per line, and separately under a carrier appointment, so a person can be licensed without being appointed. More on how this sector works.
Run the rules of the other side first, so the submission does not come back. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.
- Counting the clock that public marketing starts on a listing
- Checking for a signed buyer agreement before a tour is confirmed
- Catching a filing rejection before the clerk does
- Catching the invoice lines an e-billing gate will reject
- Checking that a technician may legally take the call
- Filing a backflow test report the purveyor will accept
- Why do underwriters keep sending my ACORD 125 back as incomplete?
- How current do loss runs have to be for a commercial submission?
- What gets checked on an ACORD 140 before it goes to market?
- Can I check a submission against carrier appetite before I send it?
- Why did a carrier say my risk was already cleared to another agency?
Back to insurance agencies, or see how this is priced and scoped.