The Intake Blueprint: A Practical Workflow for Reducing Rework

Guest blog by Jeremy Peskin, Sembley

Guest blogs are written by contributors outside of HawkSoft. The participants' views are entirely their own and may not reflect the views of HawkSoft.

There are plenty of ways an independent insurance agency can try to become more efficient, but one of the most useful places to look is how often work gets repeated during the submission process.

A producer realizes halfway through quoting that a location is missing. Someone follows up for loss runs that could have been requested weeks earlier. Information collected in an email gets entered again somewhere else. An account changes hands and the next person spends time figuring out what's already been done.

These are ordinary parts of agency life, but across hundreds of submissions and renewals they can consume a significant amount of time. A more consistent intake process can help by establishing what information needs to be collected, who is responsible for it, which documents should be in hand, and what needs to happen before an account moves to the next stage.

Here are a few practical ways agencies can build that consistency into their workflows.

In this article:

• Standardize the basics
• Build ownership and document collection into the workflow
• Define a complete handoff
• Adjust the process for new business and renewals
• Start with a simple workflow audit

Standardize the basics

Every commercial account is different, and the questions needed to understand a contractor may be very different from those needed for a restaurant or manufacturer. But a large portion of the information agencies collect is predictable.

Rather than treating every intake as an entirely custom exercise, identify the core information your team needs for most submissions. For many agencies, that includes the named insured and entity structure, locations and exposures, loss history, coverage needs, and the timeline for quoting.

Think of this as the first 80% of intake. The remaining 20% can be tailored to the particular risk. Starting with a consistent foundation allows producers and account teams to spend their follow-up time understanding the nuances of the account instead of asking for information they already knew they would need.

It's also worth considering how that information is collected. When critical data lives primarily in emails and long notes, people have to find and interpret it each time they use it. Wherever practical, information such as revenue, payroll, employee counts, locations, vehicles, and coverage limits should be captured consistently so it can be easily reviewed and updated later.

That becomes especially useful at renewal, when the agency should be able to start with what it already knows about the insured.

Build ownership and document collection into the workflow

Even a well-designed intake can stall when responsibility for moving it forward isn't clear.

There are usually a few jobs involved in getting an account ready for market. Someone collects information from the insured, someone verifies that it's complete, and someone prepares the submission. At a small agency, one person might handle all three. At a larger agency, the account might pass between producers, CSRs, marketers, and other team members.

The important part is knowing who is responsible at each stage and who ultimately owns getting the account market-ready. That clarity makes it easier to spot missing information before the account moves downstream.

Supporting documents should be treated the same way. Loss runs, dec pages, and schedules are common sources of follow-up during commercial submissions. When those documents will be necessary to market the risk, requesting them during intake can save the team from trying to collect them while quotes are already in progress.

Agencies can make this easier by defining a minimum standard for when an account is ready to go to market. That standard might include required client information, the appropriate loss runs and dec pages, current schedules, and any other documents that are routinely needed for the types of business the agency writes.

Define a complete handoff

Handoffs are another common source of repeated work. All of the necessary information may technically be available, but the person receiving the account still has to sort through emails, notes, attachments, and application data to understand what's happening.

A consistent handoff should give the recipient enough context to begin working without reconstructing the account.

That generally means providing a high-level understanding of the risk and its key exposures, confirming which supporting documents have been collected, explaining anything unusual that an underwriter should know, and making the ownership and quoting timeline clear.

Each agency can decide what that handoff looks like. It might be a checklist, a standard internal form, a workflow within the agency's existing systems, or simply an agreed-upon set of information that must be present before responsibility changes hands. The format matters less than having a shared definition of "complete."

Adjust the process for new business and renewals

For new business, a useful intake should leave the team with a clear understanding of who the insured is, what is being insured, what the business does, its loss history, the coverage being requested, and the timeline.

This includes confirming the legal named insured and entity structure, identifying locations and major exposures, understanding operations, collecting the appropriate loss history, clarifying lines and limits, and establishing the effective date and quoting timeline. From there, the agency can add the questions required for the specific class of business.

Renewals call for a different approach because the agency already has much of this information. Instead of collecting everything again, the process can concentrate on changes since the prior term.

Has the insured added an entity, DBA, or location? Have its operations changed? Are revenue, payroll, or employee counts materially different? Are there new vehicles or equipment? Have coverage needs changed? Were there claims or endorsements during the current term?

A renewal process built around reviewing and updating existing information can reduce work for both the agency and the insured. It also gives the team more time to discuss meaningful changes in the risk instead of recreating last year's file.

Start with a simple workflow audit

Improving intake doesn't require rebuilding an agency's entire process at once. A useful first step is to look at the current workflow and identify where the most time is being lost.

Consider rating your agency from one to five in these areas:

1.  Intake completeness
2.  Document collection
3.  Handoff clarity
4. Submission quality 

How often does your team chase basic information after quoting has started? Are loss runs, dec pages, and schedules usually available when they're needed? Can someone easily pick up an account from another team member? Does the final submission give the underwriter a clear picture of the risk?

Once you've identified the weakest area, choose one change to address it. That could mean creating a minimum viable intake checklist, defining which documents must be collected before marketing begins, establishing a standard handoff process, or assigning clear ownership for getting each account market-ready.

The objective is consistency. When the basic information is collected earlier, routine follow-ups become less common. When documents arrive during intake, they don't have to be chased later. When information is captured consistently, it's easier to update at renewal. And when everyone agrees on what a complete handoff looks like, the next person can spend less time figuring out what has already happened.

For an independent agency handling a steady flow of new business and renewals, small improvements like these can add up to a meaningful amount of time over the course of a year.