Commercial insurance · Intake
RelayCommercial insuranceThe submissions inbox is where underwriting capacity goes to wait
Commercial underwriters lose hours to an inbox of broker submissions before any risk is assessed. This long read argues for a Relay that reads, sorts and briefs, while underwriters keep every decision.
Valnora & Elric team5 min read
Ask a commercial underwriter where the week went and the answer is rarely "pricing risk". It is the inbox. Broker submissions arrive as emails with a mix of attachments: a cover note, a schedule of values, a loss run, sometimes a presentation. Before anyone can judge the risk, someone has to work out what it is, whether it fits appetite, whether the insured is already a customer, and what is missing.
That work is usually treated as administration. It is better understood as the first stage of underwriting, and it is where much of a team’s capacity quietly goes.
Intake decides which risks get underwritten
In commercial lines, the order in which submissions are read shapes the book. A well-presented submission that fits appetite can sit behind twenty that do not, and the broker who needed terms by Friday takes the risk elsewhere. Meanwhile, underwriters spend time on submissions they would have declined in a minute if someone had flagged the problem first.
Speed matters less than order. The goal is not to answer every broker faster. It is to make sure the submissions that fit appetite reach the right underwriter first, with the gaps already identified.
Why a Relay, rather than a pipeline
A rules-based pipeline handles structured inputs well. Broker submissions are not structured. The useful work is reading a cover note, noticing that the occupancy described does not match the one in the schedule, and knowing that your guidelines refer flood exposure above a certain level.
That is why this setup uses a Relay, an AI coworker in Agent Serve with its own instructions, access and limits, rather than a fixed sequence of steps. The Relay watches the shared submissions mailbox on Outlook or Gmail, polling every 15 minutes. You describe in plain language what counts as a new submission, and it ignores the rest. The watch only reads: it never moves, labels or deletes mail, so the inbox stays the record your team already relies on.
For each new submission, the Relay:
- checks appetite by searching your underwriting guidelines in the Knowledge Base;
- checks history by querying tables of in-force policies and past submissions in Tables, read-only;
- writes a brief that names the underwriter your routing map points to, posted as a task result in the team’s chat with the Relay, with a notification.
A Relay between the broker inbox and the underwriter
Relay · Submissions intake
- 01Watch the inboxPolls the shared Outlook or Gmail submissions mailbox every 15 minutes. It never changes the mailbox.
- 02Check appetiteSearches underwriting guidelines and appetite statements in the Knowledge Base.
- 03Check historyQueries tables of in-force policies and past submissions, read-only.
- 04Intake briefA one-page brief per submission: fit, gaps, history, suggested owner and next step.
- 05Draft broker emailRequests for missing information wait for an underwriter’s approval before sending.
People and data
- 06Extraction workflowOptional: OCR blocks pull schedules and loss runs from attachments into a table.
- 07UnderwriterReads the brief, decides whether to quote, decline or ask, and approves any email.
- 08Underwriting managerOwns the Relay’s instructions and reviews its activity and declined actions.
What the underwriter receives
What the solution produces
Intake brief for a new submission (illustrative)
Record- Submission
- Property and business interruption · food manufacturer · 3 sites · via a regional broker
- Appetite fit
- Within appetite for occupancy and sums insured. One site is in a flood zone your guidelines refer.
- History
- Quoted two years ago, not bound. No in-force policies with this insured.
- What is missing
- Five-year loss history and the sprinkler certificate for the main site.
- Deadline
- Broker asks for terms by the end of next week.
- Suggested next step
- Request the two missing items, refer the flood exposure, assign to the property team.
Draft email to the broker (illustrative)
MessageThank you for the submission for the three sites. Before we can provide terms, could you send:
the five-year loss history for all locations, and the current sprinkler certificate for the main site.
Once we have these we will come back to you on terms ahead of your deadline.
The brief has the same fields every time, which is what makes it fast to read. The underwriter decides to quote, decline or ask for more. If they want to ask, the Relay has already drafted the email.
Attachments deserve a straight answer. The Relay reasons over what it can read, but schedules of values and loss runs are often scanned PDFs or spreadsheets. If you need those figures in the brief, add a small extraction workflow built in the workflow builder: an OCR block reads the attachments and a Table block writes the figures to a submissions table the Relay can query. A Relay’s writes to tables go through a workflow it runs, so allow it this one; at Assist each run waits for approval unless you mark the workflow to run on its own.
What the Relay is not allowed to do
The limits are the part an underwriting manager should read first.
- It never emails a broker on its own. Every email waits for an approval, under every autonomy level. The approval is tied to the exact message the underwriter saw. If the text changes, it needs a new approval, and an unanswered request expires after 24 hours by default.
- Recipients are limited. A recipient policy can restrict email to an allowlist of broker domains.
- It does not quote, decline or bind. Those decisions stay with the underwriter. The instructions say so, and your rating and policy systems are not on the Relay’s allowlist of services and connections.
- It runs at the Assist level. Saving a brief as a file in the library needs approval at this level. Most teams keep briefs in chat and save only what is worth filing.
Every proposal, approval, decline and sent email is written to the workspace audit log, so the underwriting manager can see what the Relay did and what people decided.
Data and fair treatment
Submissions contain personal data about directors, employees and sometimes claimants. If you operate under GDPR, the same rules on purpose, minimisation and retention apply to the Relay’s inputs as to your team’s inbox. Data retention in Agent Serve can be set from one day to five years. If submissions cannot leave your environment, run Agent Serve self-hosted and use your own model keys or a self-hosted model.
Appetite guidance should be the only basis for the Relay’s fit assessment. Keep the instructions focused on the risk, not the broker, and review declined drafts regularly for patterns.
Starting small
Begin with one line of business and one mailbox. Let the Relay brief a single underwriting team for a month while they continue to work the inbox as before, and compare its triage with theirs. Once the briefs are reliably useful, add the next line. For the claims side of the same book, see insurance claims triage.
Controls and governance
Approvals before action
Relays never send email or book meetings without an approval, under any autonomy setting. An approval covers the exact payload the reviewer saw and expires if nobody decides.
Audit trail
Proposals, approvals, declines and executed actions are written to the workspace audit log, which admins can export.
Roles and permission groups
Admin, write and read roles per workspace, plus permission groups that limit which models, blocks and integrations a team can use.
SSO and SCIM
Sign in through your identity provider with SAML 2.0 or OIDC, and provision people with SCIM.
Self-hosting
Run Agent Serve in your own cloud or data centre, next to the systems it reads.
Bring your own keys
Use your organisation’s own model provider keys at organisation or workspace level.
Zero data retention
Zero data retention with supported model providers, backed by your own provider keys and agreements or self-hosted models. Some provider features keep data by design, such as Gemini Deep Research, so they are outside zero data retention.
GDPR ready
Retention from one day to five years, deletion and access controls support GDPR obligations. Ready means the controls are in place, not a certification.
More on how Agent Serve handles access, data and audit on the security page.
What you need
- A shared submissions mailbox on Outlook or Gmail that the Relay can read
- Underwriting guidelines and appetite statements, uploaded to a Knowledge Base
- Tables of in-force policies and past submissions, exported from your policy system
- A routing map: which line of business goes to which underwriter or team
- An allowlist of broker domains the Relay may draft emails to
- An underwriting manager to own the Relay’s instructions and approvals