The vocabulary of submission intake
Plain definitions of the terms that come up when commercial insurance operations teams talk about intake, extraction and underwriting workflow. Written to be useful whether or not you ever buy anything from us.
11 terms, defined
Each entry opens with a single sentence that answers the question on its own.
Submission intake
Submission intake is the process by which an insurer, MGA or wholesale broker receives a risk submission from a broker, extracts the underwriting information from the accompanying documents, and records it in a policy administration system so the risk can be cleared, rated and quoted.
ACORD forms
ACORD forms are the standardised insurance application and certificate documents published by ACORD, a non-profit standards body, which US brokers use to submit risk information to carriers and MGAs in a consistent format.
Loss run
A loss run is a report issued by an insurance carrier listing the claims made against a policy over a given period, including the date, status, cause, amount paid and amount reserved for each claim.
MGA (Managing General Agent)
A managing general agent is a specialised insurance intermediary that has been granted underwriting authority by a carrier, allowing it to bind coverage, price risk, and often handle claims on that carrier's behalf within an agreed appetite.
Wholesale broker
A wholesale broker is an intermediary that places risks on behalf of retail agents with carriers or MGAs the retail agent cannot access directly, typically for specialty, hard-to-place or surplus lines business.
Clearance
Clearance is the process of checking a newly received submission against existing records to determine whether the risk has already been submitted by another broker, is a renewal of existing business, or is genuinely new, before any underwriting work begins.
Policy administration system (PAS)
A policy administration system is the system of record an insurer, MGA or broker uses to manage policies through their lifecycle, covering submission, rating, quoting, binding, issuance, endorsement, renewal and often billing.
ACORD data extraction
ACORD data extraction is the automated reading of ACORD insurance forms to produce structured, typed data fields — such as named insured, effective date, vehicle counts and coverage limits — that can be written into a policy administration system.
DOT number
A USDOT number is a unique identifier assigned by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to commercial motor carriers operating in the United States, used to track a carrier's safety record, inspections, crashes and operating authority.
VIN decoding
VIN decoding is the process of interpreting a 17-character Vehicle Identification Number to determine a vehicle's manufacturer, model, model year, body type, engine and other attributes used in rating commercial auto risks.
Loss ratio
Loss ratio is the ratio of claims paid and reserved to premium earned over a period, expressed as a percentage, and is the primary measure of whether a book of business is priced adequately.
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