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Broker operations AI: turn an inbox of submissions into a traced pack

Submissions arrive as PDFs and forwarded threads. Humans re-key. Quotes wait. The job is a pack the market can actually price, plus a chase list for what is still missing.

Submissions arrive as PDFs and forwarded threads. Assistants re-key named insured, limits, and TIV into a spreadsheet. The market waits. Someone sends an incomplete pack because the SOV is in the next email. Someone else sends a complete-looking pack that hides a slip-versus-schedule split. Quotes come back late, or they come back on the wrong numbers.

The job is a pack the market can actually price, plus a chase list for what is still missing. That is placing operations, not a strategy essay about distribution. Connect a submissions mailbox — read-only, scoped, revocable — and stop treating the inbox as a memory.

The job

A placing broker is a routing system for files. The inbox is the system of record until a pack exists. Until then, every underwriter you send to is guessing, chasing, or quoting a ghost.

Inbox, then pack, then market. The Submission Agent is the named worker for turning attachments into a traced file. The Triage Agent is for ordering what to work when the mailbox is a pile. The Quote Agent is for assembling what a following market can answer, not for binding as you. Humans still place. Software that sends mail as the broker is a different trust boundary. The v1 connector is read-only on purpose.

The job is not to summarise the cover email. Cover emails lie by omission. The job is to open every attachment, copy fields with spans, flag gaps, flag conflicts, and produce a chase list a technician can work before the pack leaves the building. If you cannot point at the page for the occurrence limit, you do not have a limit. You have a hope.

Facultative placing is a pack per risk. Treaty placing is a portfolio contract and a different completeness test. Mixing both into one undifferentiated submissions folder is how a facultative TIV gets discussed as if it were a treaty board. Name the job on the file.

This website does not take live client packs. Inspect the fictional ACME Construction Ltd file on the pack inspector. Production ingest stays in your tenant. Grant a mailbox, watch what was read, revoke when you want the grant gone.

A placing day that still works by memory looks like this. Mail arrives. Someone forwards the zip to a shared box. An assistant opens the slip, types the insured into a worksheet, types the limit, types a TIV from the cover email because the SOV is slow to open. The underwriter gets a message that the file is in. The SOV in the next email has a warehouse the worksheet never saw. The quote comes back on the worksheet number. That is not a people problem. That is a pack that never existed. The mailbox grant is there so the pack is built from the attachments, not from the cover email.

Scope the grant. Submissions for placing is a mailbox or a folder. The rest of the firm mail estate is not a placing inbox. If IT wants a tenant-wide crawl, that is a different conversation and a different risk. Read-only means the product can build the pack and the chase list. It does not mean the product can send as you. Keep those sentences separate in the order form.

What the pack contains

A pack is a working file, not a pitch deck. Underwriters quote against documents. They do not quote against your enthusiasm.

Named insured, as written. Period. Interest and territory. Limits and deductibles. Attachments. TIV, with sources. Schedule highlights. Loss history with an as-at date. Wording excerpts that actually govern. Source spans on every populated field. Gaps. Conflicts. A chase list.

The long checklist lives in How to build a facultative submission pack. The short test is: can the underwriter price without guessing, and can they open the span when they disagree with you.

Incomplete packs waste a market. You burn a line for a file that was missing the hours clause, then you resubmit and look like you do not run a process. Over-complete packs that bury the conflict are worse. If the slip and the SOV disagree, the pack should say so on the first screen, not in an appendix nobody opens.

ACME Construction Ltd (acme.example) is the fictional example we will keep using. Slip.pdf page 1: named insured, period 1 Jan 2026 to 31 Dec 2026. Slip.pdf page 2: USD 10,000,000 any one occurrence, TIV 42 million. SOV.xlsx: total 47.1 million. Hours clause: not in the pack. SOV as-at: not in the pack. That is a pack with two traced fields, one conflict, and two chase items. That is sendable only if you want the market to price a fight. Usually you chase first.

Source-grounded extraction is how those fields stay honest. No span, no value. The pack is the product you owe the underwriter.

What the pack is not: a placing presentation, a client update, a market circular, or a chat summary of the zip. Those documents can point at the pack. They are not the pack. If your current process is a PDF that restates the limit in prose and attaches the zip as a courtesy, the underwriter is still doing extraction. Move the spans into the working file. Leave the prose in the covering note if you must. Do not let the prose become the source of the number.

Versioning is part of completeness. SOV v3 is not SOV v2 with extra rows you hope someone notices. The pack should say which attachment it used for the schedule total, and it should put a chase item on the list if a later mail arrived with a newer workbook that has not been read. Markets quote the file you sent, not the file you meant to send.

Slip versus SOV

The slip (or MRC) is what you are asking the market to write. The SOV is the schedule of what is actually there. They are allowed to disagree. They are not allowed to be silently merged.

Fictional example: ACME Construction Ltd, acme.example. The slip shows TIV 42 million. The SOV totals 47.1 million because a warehouse was added after the slip was typed. That is a conflict, not a rounding error. The pack should show both spans: slip page 2 and the SOV total row. It should not emit 44.55 million. It should not pick the slip because the slip is neater. It should not pick the SOV because the SOV is longer.

Operators already know this fight. It shows up as a query from the underwriter at 18:40, or as a quote on the lower number, or as a claim on a location that was never on the slip. Putting both spans in the pack is not decoration. It is how you decide whether to amend the slip, drop the location, or tell the market the schedule moved.

Other slip-versus-SOV fights worth naming:

• Occupancy on the slip says offices. The SOV has a construction yard. That is class, not rounding.
• Territory on the slip excludes a state. The SOV has a location in that state. That is coverage, not a geocode nicety.
• The slip lists three locations. The SOV lists eleven. The extra eight are chase items or an endorsement, not a detail.

If your current process is to re-type the SOV total onto the slip because the market form has one TIV box, you are the conflict. Stop doing that in the dark. Do it as a labelled amendment or put it on the chase list.

Chase list

A chase list is the ordered set of missing pages, stale schedules, unsigned slips, and unresolved slip-versus-SOV conflicts that block a quote. It is the work queue, not a narrative summary of the file. See What is a chase list in reinsurance submissions?.

Useful chase items name the document, the field, and why it matters. Hours clause missing: the CAT market will assume a window you did not agree. SOV as-at missing: values may be last year. Unsigned slip: you do not have a placing document. Loss run stale: development is a guess. Additional insured unnamed: the certificate will bounce.

Regenerate the list when a new attachment arrives. A chase list that is a static Word note in the cover email dies the moment the client sends SOV v3. The pack should re-read, keep the spans that still hold, and reopen items that the new file did not close.

What does not belong on a chase list: opinions about the quality of the risk, reminders to be nice to the underwriter, or a paraphrase of the broker cover letter. Those are placing notes. Keep them somewhere else. The chase list is only the evidence still absent or still in conflict.

Read-only ingest means the product can tell you what to chase. It does not, in v1, send the chase email as you. If you want that later, treat it as a new permission, not a toggle hiding in a connector that was sold as read-only.

Order the list by what blocks the quote, not by what is easiest to ask for. An unsigned slip blocks placing. A missing hours clause blocks a CAT read. A missing as-at on the SOV blocks anyone who cares about valuation date. A missing brochure does not. If the product ranks the brochure first because it saw the word missing more often, the list is a document inventory, not a chase list. Technicians will ignore it.

When the client sends a page, the item should close with a span or stay open with a reason. Closed because we are tired of asking is not a close. Closed because the hours clause is now on slip page 4, with a span, is a close. The list is the memory of the file. If it only lives in someone's head, the next person on the box will send an incomplete pack again.

Facultative versus treaty placing

Facultative reinsurance is optional on both sides. Each risk is a pack: slip, SOV, loss history, wording excerpts, then a certificate if someone actually writes. Speed without a complete file is a faster wrong quote.

Treaty reinsurance is automatic capacity for a class. The placing file is a portfolio: wording, structure, bordereaux samples, loss experience, and submissions of the class — not one location schedule pretending to be a treaty. Completeness is whether the following market can see the board, the attachment, and the exclusions, not whether one warehouse is on an SOV.

Mixing the two in one inbox is how fields get posted to the wrong year. A facultative occurrence limit is not a treaty layer. A treaty hours clause is not a facultative location warranty. Technicians who work both need the pack type on the file name and in the first screen, or they will chase the wrong counterparty.

If your box does both, split folders or split connectors. Read-only still applies. The grant should be narrower than the whole firm mail estate. Submissions for placing is a mailbox. Accounts, claims, and HR are not a placing inbox. Scope is part of the job, not an IT footnote.

Treaty placing still produces a pack. It is a different pack. Structure, attachment, territorial scope, class, exclusions, bordereaux samples, and experience for the book — not a warehouse row. If you drop a facultative SOV into a treaty submission because it was in the same zip, the following market will price the warehouse and miss the board. Name the pack type in the file. Teach the triage step to separate them before anyone re-keys a TIV into a treaty worksheet.

Facultative certificates, when someone actually writes, are evidence of cover. They are not a second slip. If the certificate limit disagrees with the slip you placed, that is a new conflict, not a rounding. Keep the placing pack and the signed evidence related, with spans on both. Do not let the certificate become the only document anyone can find six months later.

Agents and proof

Named workers, not a blob called AI:

• Submission Agent — inbox of slips, SOVs, and loss runs into a traced pack with a chase list.
• Triage Agent — order the pile so the file that is almost complete is not buried under a scan of a brochure.
• Quote Agent — assemble what a market can answer from the pack. It does not bind as the broker.

Proof on this site is labelled on purpose. London market broker placement and facultative broker submission automation are illustrations, not a logo wall. They are not a permission to invent a win rate on this page. Walk the sample pack instead. If a number in an illustration does not match what you can see in the inspector, believe the inspector.

Mystery-shop like a placing lead. Bring a file with a TIV split, a missing hours clause, and an unsigned slip. If the product averages TIV, invents 72 hours, or looks ready to send, you learned what you needed without a workshop. Then run the same file in a tenant with a read-only mailbox grant you can revoke.