AI insurance policy checking software for a commercial broker
A commercial insurance broker in Manchester checked every schedule, renewal, and wording by hand. ZingZee built AI insurance policy checking software that reads the insurer's documents against the client file, compares each renewal with the expiring policy, and drafts the client letter with every point cited to its clause.
- Client
- A commercial insurance broker in Manchester, authorised and regulated by the FCA, placing commercial combined and standalone liability cover for trade and industrial businesses across the North of England.
- Sector
- Insurance
- Headline result
- 5 min per policy check, from about an hour
At a glance
The broker's account handlers now run insurance policy checking and renewal comparison on one desk, and every flag is cited to the clause it came from.
A commercial insurance broker in Manchester, authorised and regulated by the FCA, placing commercial combined and standalone liability cover for trade and industrial businesses across the North of England.
The engagement was to take the manual reading out of the firm's policy checking without changing the broking system that holds its clients, policies, and accounts.
A policy desk with four tools: a verifier that checks a schedule and statement of fact against the client's instructions, a compare tool that sets a renewal against the expiring policy, an upsell finder that lists the covers a business should hold, and a draft editor that writes the renewal terms letter.
Outcomes
A policy check down from about an hour of reading to under five minutes of review.
A renewal comparison down from half a day across two schedules and two wordings to about 90 seconds, run on every renewal.
Upsells found and quoted up 60%, from the upsell finder alone.
Around 12 hours a week returned to each account handler.
Renewal terms with the client on the day the quote arrives, down from three or four days later.
A discrepancy flagged on roughly one schedule in eight before it reached the client, including an employers' liability section a previous broker had left off.
The challenge
A commercial broker sits between the client and the insurer, and every document the insurer issues is the broker's to check before the client relies on it.
A team of account handlers looks after several hundred client policies a year through the full cycle of quote, bind, mid-term adjustment, and renewal. Every document an insurer issued was checked by hand before it went to the client, against a written checking procedure that each handler followed line by line.
The desk works from the documents themselves, so it sits alongside whichever broking system a firm runs, whether that is Acturis, Open GI, or SSP, and it reads the schedules and wordings insurers issue from platforms such as Guidewire, Duck Creek, and Sapiens. The firm had not changed how it checked a policy in five years, and the record of what had been checked was whatever the handler typed into the broking system that day.
The placement chain for commercial insurance
A trade or industrial business buys its cover through a broker. The broker's account executive owns the relationship, a placement broker presents the risk to insurers and negotiates terms, and account handlers service the policies through renewals, mid-term adjustments, and documents. On the insurer's side, underwriters decide whether to offer cover and on what terms, working from technical prices that actuaries build from claims experience and exposure data. Some business is written by managing general agents under authority delegated by an insurer, and specialist or larger risks reach the Lloyd's market through wholesale brokers, where several syndicates each take a share of one risk.
Whichever route a risk takes, the result comes back to the broker as documents: a schedule setting out the cover, a statement of fact recording what the price was based on, a policy wording of 100 pages or more, and endorsements that add, remove, or change cover. The broker's job is to prove that those documents match what the client asked for and to tell the client what they mean.
The systems a commercial insurance business runs on
A policy passes through several firms and many systems before it reaches the client, and each system holds part of the picture the broker has to check. The map below sets out the main areas, the job each one does, and examples of the systems and standards in use in the UK market today:
Insurers and the market
Actuaries, underwriters, MGAs, and Lloyd's syndicates
The broker
Account executives, placement brokers, and account handlers
The client
Trade and industrial businesses across the North of England, their sites, and their staff
- Renewal terms letter
- Evidence of cover
Insurers and the market
Where the price, the terms, and the wording come from.
Pricing
Actuaries build the technical price that underwriters quote from, using rating models fed by claims experience and exposure data, often on pricing platforms such as Akur8, Earnix, and hyperexponential.
In the documentsThe premium and the rating basis behind every quote the broker receives.
Reserving
Actuaries estimate what is still owed on claims, including claims incurred but not yet reported, and set reserves against them.
In the documentsClaims experience on the policy feeds back into the renewal price and terms.
Chain ladderBornhuetter-FergusonR ChainLadderCapital and reporting
Insurers hold capital under the PRA's Solvency UK regime, publish a Solvency and Financial Condition Report, and account under IFRS 17.
In the documentsCapacity and appetite, which decide whether a renewal is offered at all.
Solvency UKSFCRIFRS 17Catastrophe and flood
Property exposure to flood and windstorm is modelled with catastrophe models and flood maps from vendors such as Moody's RMS, JBA Risk Management, and Twinn by Haskoning before it is priced.
In the documentsFlood loadings in the premium, and flood excesses or exclusions on the schedule.
Underwriting and submissions
Underwriters triage submissions and set terms in underwriting platforms, increasingly with AI from firms such as Send, Cytora, Concirrus, and Artificial that structures incoming documents and emails.
In the documentsThe quote, its subjectivities, and the conditions the underwriter attaches.
Policy administration
Core platforms such as Guidewire, Duck Creek, and Sapiens issue the schedule, wording, and endorsements, bill the premium, and run the claims that follow.
In the documentsThe schedule, wording, endorsements, and statement of fact the broker checks.
The broker
Where the client is served and every document is checked.
Broker management system
The broker's system of record for clients, policies, accounts, and e-trading with insurers, run on platforms such as Acturis, Open GI, and SSP.
In the documentsThe client file every document is checked against, and the rating notes that record the check.
E-trading and placing
Quotes are traded electronically with insurers, and London Market risks are placed and bound on digital platforms such as PPL and Whitespace, using common data standards from ACORD.
In the documentsQuotes and binders exchanged as data, and London Market contracts held as structured records.
Documents and signatures
Schedules, wordings, and endorsements arrive as PDF and Word files, and client agreements are signed electronically with tools such as Docusign.
In the documentsThe PDF and Word files the handler reads, and the client's signed agreement.
PDFWordPremium finance
A lender such as Premium Credit or PremFina pays the premium to the broker upfront, and the client repays it monthly by direct debit.
In the documentsThe credit agreement the client signs to spread the premium.
Claims support
A claims broker supports the client through a claim with the insurer and the loss adjuster appointed to it.
In the documentsWhere a missed condition or a wrong limit surfaces after a loss.
Loss adjustersCILA
Data and regulation
What a risk is checked against, and the rules the broker works under.
Company and credit data
Brokers and insurers check the insured's exact legal name, company status, and credit standing with data from providers such as Dun & Bradstreet, Creditsafe, and Experian before cover is placed.
In the documentsThe insured's legal name and company number on the schedule.
Companies HouseAddress and peril data
Risk addresses are matched to an Ordnance Survey property reference and assessed for flood with data from providers such as JBA Risk Management before they are rated.
In the documentsEach risk address and its flood rating on a multi-site schedule.
Employers' liability records
Employers' liability policies are registered with ELTO, the Employers' Liability Tracing Office, on a shared industry database that anyone can search.
In the documentsThe employers' liability certificate and its registration.
Employers' Liability DatabaseConduct rules
The FCA's rules for insurance distribution, from the demands and needs statement to fair value and evidence of cover.
In the documentsThe demands and needs statement, and evidence of cover issued promptly after inception.
ICOBSConsumer DutyIDDPRODInsurance Act 2015
The client's duty of fair presentation, which counts what the broker knows as what the client knows, and proportionate remedies when it falls short.
In the documentsThe statement of fact, and what the client must disclose at renewal.
Fair presentation (s.3)Broker knowledge (s.4)Remedies (Sch. 1)Professional indemnity
Every insurance intermediary must hold professional indemnity cover against claims for its own errors and omissions.
In the documentsThe broker's own cover when a check is missed.
MIPRU 3.2.7EUR 1,300,380 per claim
Logos and names belong to their owners and are shown to illustrate the UK commercial insurance market. No affiliation with ZingZee is implied.
Insurance policy checking and the broker's duty
Policy checking is the broker's review of the documents an insurer issues against what was quoted, placed, and instructed. The courts treat it as part of the broker's duty: in Ground Gilbey v Jardine Lloyd Thompson (2011), the High Court held that a broker must draw the client's attention to any onerous or unusual terms and explain their nature and effect. The FCA requires a statement of the client's demands and needs before every contract and expects evidence of cover to reach the client promptly after inception.
The cost of a missed point falls on the client and then on the broker. Under the Insurance Act 2015, information held by the broker counts as information the client ought to know, and where a presentation falls short, the insurer can reduce a claim in proportion to the premium it would have charged. In Dalamd v Butterworth Spengler (2018), a fire at a waste site in Widnes, the court found failings by the broker at renewal, and a breach of an external storage condition, which required four metres of clearance from the buildings, left the client without cover for the loss. Each missed condition, wrong limit, or outdated insured name is a professional indemnity exposure for the firm.
For a commercial combined and liability book, the check covers a fixed set of points: the insured entities and risk addresses, the business description, the sums insured for buildings, contents, stock, and machinery, the business interruption gross profit and its indemnity period, the employers' and public liability limits, products liability, excesses, retroactive dates, and the conditions that can defeat a claim, such as security, storage, hot work, and unoccupancy.
The renewal cycle
For each client the handler gathers the risk information, presents it to insurers, receives quotes, and puts the best of them to the client. When the client accepts, the insurer issues a schedule and a statement of fact, and the handler binds cover on those terms. Mid-term adjustments arrive whenever the client moves premises or changes what it does, and each one produces a revised schedule. Renewal terms arrive a few weeks before expiry, and the whole check is done again against the expiring policy.
The check against the client file
The handler's first task on any schedule was to prove that it agreed with the client's instructions. Each figure was read off the PDF and matched against the client's file, a folder of emails and forms open on a second screen. A tenant's improvements figure typed as £210,500 where the client had asked for £201,500 reads as correct at a glance and leaves the client short at claim time.
The wording behind the schedule
Behind the schedule sat the policy wording, often 100 pages or more, with endorsements laid on top. The handler read it for the conditions and warranties the client had to be told about: minimum security conditions, working height and depth limits, hot work permits, unoccupancy conditions, claims notification windows, and conditions precedent to liability. Each one received a rating note on the broking system, a short plain-English line on what the condition required and why it mattered to the client, and a paragraph in the client letter. Those notes were the firm's evidence of what was checked and what the client was told.
Renewal comparison across insurers
At renewal the same work was done against the expiring policy, and the difficulty doubled when the quote came from a different insurer. Two insurers describe the same cover in different words, so the handler matched "machinery" on one schedule against "machinery and plant" on the other, and "tenant's improvements" against "improvements and betterments", by eye. The basis of settlement, reinstatement or indemnity, sits in the wording, so both wordings had to be read for it. A client moving from separate property and liability policies to one combined quote meant three schedules and three wordings open side by side.
The consequences
- 01
A full check on a new policy took an hour or more and a renewal comparison took most of a morning, so the handlers checked what they had time to check.
- 02
Renewal terms reached the client three or four days after the quote arrived, which left little time to go back to the underwriter before expiry.
- 03
A change in the basis of settlement between the expiring policy and the renewal quote could pass unnoticed, because the two wordings used different words for it.
- 04
Onerous conditions the broker had a duty to explain surfaced late, when the client asked or a claim was made, and each one was a professional indemnity exposure.
- 05
The record of what was checked and what the client was told existed only as far as the handler had typed it that day.
- 06
Cover a client should have held, and would have bought, was never quoted because nobody had time to look for it.
The handlers now run every new policy and every renewal through the desk, and the broking system remains the system of record.
A policy check down from about an hour of reading to under five minutes of review.
The solution
ZingZee built the policy desk in the order in which each part of the manual check cost the handlers the most time.
Verification against the client file came first, because it took the most handler time every day. The compare tool followed, then the upsell finder, then the draft editor, and the issue log once the tools were in daily use. The desk is a web application the handlers use alongside the broking system, which stays the system of record. Every flag carries the line it was read from, and nothing leaves the firm until a handler has read the flags and pressed send.
The checking process, step by step
Each job runs through the same eight steps. Deterministic rules do the extraction and matching, a language model reads only for meaning and must quote its source, and the account handler makes every decision that reaches the client:
- 01Account handler
Documents into a job
The handler drops the insurer's schedule, statement of fact, wording, and endorsements into a job, as PDF or Word, against the client's file.
SchedulePDFStatement of factPDFPolicy wordingPDFEndorsementsDOCX - 02Deterministic rules
Layout-preserved reading
Every page is read as layout-preserved text, and Word schedules are read table row by table row, so each label stays beside its figure.
- 03Deterministic rules
Figures with source lines
More than twenty scheduled figures are extracted on both sides, from insured entities to retroactive dates, each anchored to the line it came from.
Tenant's improvements£201,500Matches the fileSource lineTenant's Improvements ........ £201,500 - 04Deterministic rules
Insurer terminology
Each checklist item carries the aliases insurers use for it, so a figure labelled two different ways lands in the same field.
MachineryMachinery and plantTenant's improvementsImprovements and bettermentsOne field, both insurers - 05Language model
Clauses quoted verbatim
Every candidate clause is located across the full wording, and a grounded model call returns a verbatim quote or no answer at all.
Basis of settlement, wording page 80“… to a condition equal to but not better or more extensive than its condition when new …”
Verbatim quote foundNo quote, no answer - 06The desk
Differences by severity
The renewal is set against the expiring policy figure by figure and clause by clause, and the differences are ranked by severity with both source lines.
- HighBasis of settlement: reinstatement to indemnity2 sources
- MediumExcess changed on the property section2 sources
- LowWording edition updated2 sources
- 07Account handler
Handler review
The handler confirms or corrects each flag against the client file, and a flag with no source line never reaches the screen.
Insured entity matches the fileBasis of settlement change explainedHot work condition added to letterAHAccount handler signs offSend - 08The desk
Letter and record
The renewal terms letter is drafted from the confirmed flags, and the job keeps the documents, flags, rating notes, and the letter as sent.
Audit trail savedRenewal terms
Conditions you must meet
Insurance policy checking against the client file
Policy verification
The verifier checks more than twenty scheduled figures against the client's file, from the insured entities and addresses to the sums insured, indemnity periods, liability limits, excesses, and retroactive dates. Each field shows a tick or a flag with the line it was read from, and the flags sort to the top. A new schedule now opens as a short list of flagged lines, and the PDF is opened only to confirm a flag. The verifier works the same way on new business as on renewals, so the client's requirements are the master document every insurer's terms are checked against.
Conditions and exclusions
The wording and every endorsement are read in full, and each condition that matters to the client's trade is listed with a draft rating note and the page it sits on, ranked by relevance to the trade. A demolition contractor's job lists the hot work and height conditions first; a card wholesaler's lists stock and security. These are the onerous and unusual terms the broker has a duty to explain, and they now arrive drafted with the page reference in place.
Renewal comparison and policy wording comparison
The compare tool
The compare tool sets two policies against each other: a renewal against the expiring cover, or up to five separate policies against one combined quote. It reads every schedule and wording on both sides, matches items across insurers' terminology, and lists the differences by severity with the source lines from both sides. A change in the basis of settlement from reinstatement to indemnity is flagged at the highest severity with both clauses quoted.
Multi-site schedules
A multi-property schedule is read property by property, so a client with several sites is compared site by site. A client on six sites shows six rows of figures, each matched to its address, and a missing site can no longer hide inside a merged total.
Cover the client should hold
The upsell finder
A handler enters a company name and website, and the tool reads the client's own site and lists the covers the business should hold, ranked from essential to optional, against what the broker already places. The gaps form the upsell list, and the handler has it in front of them before the renewal call.
The client letter and the record
The draft editor
From the confirmed flags and conditions, the tool writes the renewal terms letter in the firm's own format, for the client or for the underwriter, in an editor the handler corrects and sends. The conditions paragraph is written from the flags, so a flagged condition cannot be left out of the letter.
The audit trail
Every job keeps the documents, the flags, the rating notes, and the letter as sent, with the source clause behind each one. When the FCA or a client asks what was checked and what was told, the handler opens the job.
The issue log
A button on every page lets a handler report a wrong or missing extraction against the job it happened on, and the report reaches ZingZee with the case attached, so each fix ships against a real job.
AI for insurance brokers, under the FCA's expectations
The FCA regulates AI through its existing principles and the Consumer Duty, with a stated focus on testing, explainability, and accountability. The policy desk applies those principles through four controls:
- A deterministic extractor that reads every document the same way
- A language model limited to meaning, with a verbatim quote behind every answer
- A handler's sign-off on every flag before it reaches a client
- A private database and file store, with no client document used to train any model
- Client documents handled as personal data under UK GDPR, reachable only through the firm's key
Engineering challenges
Three problems took most of the engineering time, and each was found on the firm's own documents:
- 01
Reading the whole wording, on both sides.
A commercial wording runs to 100 pages and 150,000 characters, and the first version passed each document to the language model in a single pass. On long documents the model ran out of reading room, reported figures on page four as "not stated", and read the new quote more thoroughly than the expiring policy. ZingZee replaced the single pass with a deterministic extractor that works on layout-preserved text, runs identically on both sides, and anchors every figure to its line. The comparison that failed in front of the handlers passed the next day.
- 02
Finding the basis of settlement and citing the right clause.
A 100-page wording has several headings that read "basis of settlement", and the property section's sits around page 80, after the index-linking clause. A keyword scan took the first heading it found and reported the wrong basis. The desk now locates every occurrence, scores each passage by the language of a material damage settlement basis, and passes the strongest to a grounded model call that must return a verbatim quote. With no quote there is no answer, and the field shows "unknown".
- 03
Terminology that differs between insurers.
One insurer writes "machinery" where another writes "machinery and plant", and "tenant's improvements" on one schedule is "improvements and betterments" on the next. A literal match reported the same figure as missing on one side and present on the other. ZingZee gave each checklist item a set of aliases so a figure labelled either way lands in the same field, and the firm's own insurer terminology list is being added to the alias set.
Delivery
- MondayThe firm sent ZingZee a real quote pack: the schedule, the statement of fact, the wording, and the summary of cover the handler had written from them.
- End of that weekA working version that read those documents and produced the flags and a draft letter was in front of the handlers, built against their own documents from the first session.
- Three weeks inThe handlers brought a live comparison to a review session and it failed on screen: two figures reported as missing that were on the page, and a Word schedule that would not read. That session produced the engineering list above.
- Within daysThe fixes shipped, verified against the same jobs that had failed, and the issue log followed so that every later miss could be reported on the job it happened on.
The desk is a Python service with a React front end, backed by a Postgres database and a private file store, with a language model doing the qualitative reading behind the deterministic extraction layer. It runs on a cloud service ZingZee manages for the firm, the site is password-gated and closed to search engines, and the service answers only to the firm's key. The broking system was not modified.
The results
The handlers now run every new policy and every renewal through the desk, and their time on each policy goes on reviewing the flags.
The result of these measures is a broker that checks every policy in full: verification, renewal comparison, rating notes, and the first draft of the client letter now run before a handler opens the wording, and every point the client is told can be traced to the clause it came from.
Every flag cites the clause and page it came from, and nothing reaches a client until a handler has read the flags and pressed send.
What's next
The compare tool will take on the firm's full insurer terminology list so that matching across wordings is exact. Rating notes will post to the broking system directly, and mid-term adjustments will be checked the same way as renewals, so a revised schedule receives the same flags as a new one. The same desk can run for any UK commercial broker with a written policy checking procedure, and each new engagement starts as this one did: a proof of concept built on one of the broker's own anonymised quote packs, in front of the handlers within a week.
